


Tethered

by Miraculous, RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU - Futuristic/Dystopian, Bondage, F/M, Female Harry Potter, age difference (17/37), inadvertent mentorship, kidnapping and captivity, original supernatural elements, rope play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:18:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miraculous/pseuds/Miraculous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: The Saints intervened in the global nuclear holocaust, repaired the world and answered humanity’s individual prayers through their Gifts for a decade. And then they fell silent.Two of the people blessed to have heard them are a peasant girl named Harry, and a Bishop in a Saint’s Cathedral named Tom.





	1. The Marking

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the discord group who helped workshop this piece. Any remaining errors are our own.

_**December 7, 2150 AD, the 89th year of the New Gods** _

Harry rolled over in her cot, listening in the darkness. There, it came, a long drawn-out cough from the cradle in the corner. She waited, and when silence followed, she closed her eyes and reached for sleep.

But it didn’t come. Though every muscle ached, and her eyelids were sore, her mind spun with a thousand worries. She lay still, anyway, mouth tight with determination. And then there was another cough, and another. She slipped from her bed, crossed the room and picked up the baby.

She tried not to worry about how light he felt; weightless, really. His clammy skin was cool. But he closed his hands into strong fists in her shirt and his eyes were focused, strangely luminous in the dark room.

“Hello, Teddy,” she whispered, rocking him against her shoulder. He turned his cheek against hers so that his thick dark hair was in her nose, and she inhaled its clean scent, then froze.

There, on the back of his neck, were the telltale red welts; the first sign of the Final Sickness.

She lifted her hand from his back and pressed her palm over his nape, as though if she held him firmly enough, she could erase this awful truth. It was the same illness that had killed his mother and left his father physically ravaged, but there hadn’t been a case in months. If anyone found out, they wouldn’t care that Teddy was innocent and helpless. They’d tear him out of Remus’s arms and toss him on a pyre.

Blinking back tears, Harry held the baby closer to her. Something fierce and insistent was rising in her, and as she turned in place, swaying automatically to soothe him, her gaze passed unfocused over the window, only to be swiftly called back.

In the frost on the pane was a face. In clear detail, as though carved with the head of a pin; every feature distinct. Harry had memorized the likeness, carved with growing desperation into trees and lampposts in every village by a people with waning, but not-yet-eradicated, hope.

The Saint of Mercy. Harry drifted toward the window, the baby’s coughing muted in her ears, where a quiet hum had begun to sound. Like the ringing sensation after suffering a particularly loud noise, or when her Uncle used to slap her sharply on the temple to get her attention. But it was soft and pleasant; more like a voice.

Harry touched the window, and a cool tingle traveled up her elbow, bloomed in her heart. Teddy sighed and relaxed against her.

Harry was too young to have ever witnessed a Gift. In her earliest memories, the Saints were already receding, slowly abandoning the world they had healed so it could fall into a deeper ruin than it was in when they arrived. But she knew at once that was what she had witnessed. She lifted her trembling hand from Teddy’s neck, revealing only unmarred skin. His forehead was damp, but warm, against her neck, and his breaths were deep, even, without the rattle that had plagued him for months.

A Gift. An unmistakable Gift. Harry laid the baby back in the cradle and stared down at him for a long time, her own exhaustion forgotten, half-convinced it was only a dream. But when the sunlight crept across the glittering snowbanks outside and filled the room, the baby still slept peacefully. And for a moment the etching of the Saint’s kind face was lit in a rainbow of color. Harry stared, rapt, for the few moments before the faint warmth of the sun burned away the frost. The only evidence anything had happened was Teddy, sleeping comfortably at last. When Remus came in, looking haggard, and smiled down at his son, he didn’t suspect a miracle.

Still, he said, “Thank God,” and wrapped an arm around Harry. She nodded, dazed.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Thank...God.”

* * *

Harry never told anyone about the Gift. She wasn’t sure they would believe her. Not that the people close to Harry would ever call her a liar, but she could just imagine. A smile and a half-pitying look before they said something like _you were exhausted. It was just your imagination_ and left it at that.

Sometimes, she wasn’t sure she trusted her memory. But in those moments she would feel a tingle in the fingertips of her right hand and recall the moment in absolute clarity. The chill of the window pane, and the pleasant charge of energy that had rippled through her. It wasn’t something she could have invented; she had no words for it, no frame of reference. It was so beyond her experience she _knew_ her imagination couldn’t have made it up.

And sometimes, for just a moment in the dead of the night, she heard that humming sound. If she strained, she was almost certain it was not a humming at all, but the low murmur of speech, that faded away before she could quite make out the words.

In the warm months, the memory felt more distant. When the winter came, and with it, the renewed threat of illness, she thought of it more often. And when Ron fell ill, she thought of it constantly.

But no matter how she strained, the windows remained empty.

_**January 11, 2155, the 94th year of the New Gods** _

After wrestling with the frivolousness of the expenditure for several days, Harry finally decided to buy a carved likeness.

It was hard to find the right kind of vendor in the market. In winter, most of the merchants shuttered their stores or even traveled to one of the southern tenements. That made sense; the English North, which some of the older people still called Scotland, was a difficult place to pass a winter if you were poor. But Remus was worried that they’d lose their place near the well and far distant from the latrines if they migrated, so they never did.

There was one merchant, though, who was more of a resident. She had once made her entire living selling carved likenesses, but as the Church weakened so did her business. Still, Harry knew if she had anything to sell, she would have at least one figurine of the Saint of Mercy. If anyone still bothered praying, it was to her.

“Morning,” said the merchant, whose name was Glenda. She wore a heavy fur robe and a blanket on her lap, and didn’t seem particularly pleased to see Harry. “Just browsing?”

Harry shook her head, and took her purse from her pocket. “If I can get a good price, I’d like that.” She nodded at a simple carving of the Saint of Mercy. It bore only a passing resemblance to the face she recalled from the frost, but it was certainly better than anything she was capable of crafting herself.

Glenda’s unpleasant expression softened, if only slightly. Everyone had at least a little empathy for someone seeking such a likeness. “What do you have?”

“Three euros, and a half-pound note,” Harry admitted.

Any trace of sympathy vanished from Glenda’s face. “Garbage,” she summarized. “I only trade saints’ faces for _meat_.”

Harry considered Glenda uneasily. She had never been a good haggler, for the same reason she wasn’t good at lying. Bluffing didn’t come naturally. Glenda glared back at her, clearly waiting for a counteroffer, then rolled her eyes after a moment of strained silence.

“Two euros,” she muttered, shaking one of her arms loose from her furs to hold out a hand snugly wrapped in a wide leather thong. Harry’s hands were bare and numb from cold, but the coins felt unnaturally warm as she passed them over. She tried not to think about how much bread they could buy. She pocketed the likeness, shoved her hands into her pockets and hurried back up the street.

The Weasleys lived in the best part of the tenement, where the oldest, sturdiest buildings stood around what had once been a large park, and was now full of tents and handmade shacks. The Weasley house was narrow but stretched three stories high, and though it was weather-worn and the windows were patched with tape and plastic where they’d been broken or cracked, Harry always thought of it as a welcoming sight.

Percy was out on the stoop, smoking a cigarette the family probably couldn’t afford. Harry nodded at him as she drew near. She hadn’t seen him in a year or so, but he hadn’t changed much in that time. His priest’s cloak, though, was the closest thing to finery that could be found in their village.

“I didn’t know you were back,” she said, pressing her chin toward her chest as a burst of wind raked the side of her face and lifted her short hair.

“Just for a couple days,” Percy said, his lips thin, and Harry felt a pang of dread. They’d called Percy because they were _that_ worried about Ron. “You should get inside,” he advised, standing up to shuffle close to the rail along the steps, and out of Harry’s path to the door. The cigarette smoke had an exotic, cloying scent that made Harry’s throat burn with the urge to cough. She swallowed instead, her eyes watering, and hurried past him.

The house wasn’t particularly warm inside, but it was certainly warmer than the outdoors. Off the foyer was the narrow living room with the soot-stained fireplace, and Fred and George were sitting close together on a knotted rug before a feeble little fire.

“Hi, Harry,” said Fred, turning his body so that she could see that a chess board sat between them.

“Has he been downstairs today?” Harry murmured, her mind still racing at the implications of Percy on the stoop.

“No,” George muttered without moving. His hand was hovering over the chessboard and moving slowly left and right, contemplating his next move. “Upstairs.”

Harry took the creaky stairs two at a time. She had old, fond memories of chasing Ron up this very staircase at high speed, breathless with laughter. By all rights he should have been faster than her—his legs were practically twice as long—but she’d always been able to outrun him.

Then she paused, frozen, on the landing. Through the open door at the top of the stairs leading into the room Ron had to himself since Bill and Percy moved out, she could see Ron. He was sitting up, and his eyes were open, but he was so uncharacteristically still and pale…

Then he caught sight of her, and grinned automatically. “Took you long enough,” he called. “It’s half past four.”

Harry forced herself to smile back, fingering the likeness in her pocket, and staring hard at Ron. But there was no cool tingle of a Gift, no voice in her ear. She bit her lip so hard she thought it might bleed, and then went in to sit in the chair drawn up by Ron’s bedside.

“How…?” she began quietly, then let the question trail off, hating herself for it.

“I’m doing pretty well,” Ron said. Harry glared at him. “What? I ate three bowls of broth.”

Harry looked at him carefully. Now that she’d caught sight of him when he’d thought no one was looking, she couldn’t _un_ see how exhausted he looked; how thin. He made Harry look plump, and she was regular mistaken for a scrawny, twelve-year-old boy rather than a seventeen-year-old girl.

“When is the doctor coming again?”

Ron lifted a hand and rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding her eye. “Tonight.” He sank back against the pillows, the little bit of talking clearly costing him, and Harry’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. She dug her fingernails into the likeness and _willed_ with all her might.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Had she spent her one request on Teddy? And if she had, did she regret it? She thought of Teddy, now six years old and healthier, somehow, than any child his age in the tenement. No, she couldn’t regret it.

But she felt indignant, too. That Gift was evidence—evidence the Saints were still here. And if they were here, how did they warrant being so sparing with their Gifts? Why save Teddy, but not Teddy’s mother, or Ron, or any of the countless others?

“Aw, Harry,” Ron said quietly, reaching out and dropping his hand over one of hers, which she’d unconsciously clenched into tight fists. “Don’t get mad. I’ll be alright.” He paused and coughed. It was more like a series of long, wrenching gasps. Harry quickly grasped his hand in both of hers, alarmed by how skeletal it was.

“Don’t talk, idiot,” she muttered. “You’re not supposed to waste your energy.”

Ron nodded, leaning back against the pillows, then lifted a brow at her expectantly. Harry picked up a dog-eared book from the nightstand. She glanced at the cover and despite herself, gave an incredulous laugh.

“ _A History of Sustainable Agriculture_?” she read aloud, still grinning. “Wow, Hermione really outdid herself this time. If this can’t put you to sleep, I don’t know what will.”

Harry stayed after Ron was asleep. She stayed until the only light on the window was the moon’s, and she drew the likeness out and held it carefully in her hands, gazing down at it.

She closed her eyes. Nothing happened. She opened them and looked urgently at the window, but nothing happened either. She put one hand on Ron’s wrist; still nothing.

And then, distantly, the humming sound. The suggestion of words. Harry closed her eyes and focused desperately on that, and nothing else. The inner world of her mind alone; the room, her friend, the window and the moon beyond it, all forgotten.

It came together like a signal on the radio. The consonants first, interrupting the static, then as it got clearer, the soft intervals of each vowel and the significance of the syllables. _Cathedral_ , whispered the voice. _Cathedral. Cathedral. Cathedral._

* * *

“Harry,” Remus said firmly. “ _No_.”

Harry blinked. She actually couldn’t recall Remus ever telling her “no.” He sometimes gave very pointed advice, and he wasn’t shy with his opinions, exactly, but they had never had the sort of relationship where he seemed willing to give orders. Maybe it was just the way he was; or, maybe it was a deliberate aversion to behaving in any way reminiscent of the Dursleys.

He seemed just as aware of the break in their usual dynamic as Harry. He rubbed his jaw with one hand, ruffling the short beard he kept there, and gazed around the room as though he would find inspiration somewhere on the bare walls. Their home was one of the nicer structures in the tenement proper, but it was still generously described as a cottage. There were two rooms; the larger one, where they cooked and ate and where Harry slept, and the room that was just large enough for Remus’s cot. Teddy slept there as well, usually, though it was never a surprise to Harry when she woke up to find him burrowed under her arm.

Right now, though, Teddy was playing outside for his allocated hour before dinner. It had seemed like the only time that Harry could reasonably announce her plans; alarming Remus in front of Teddy would be unfair.

“I wasn’t asking,” Harry said lowly. Remus swung his head back, shock evident in his expression, and Harry grimaced. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just...it’s _Ron_.”

Remus’s stricken look relaxed somewhat. “I know, Harry. And I’m so sorry that he’s ill. But…” he seemed to be wrestling with something, but he let out a sharp breath and continued more firmly. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk. Pilgrims have been begging that statue for a miracle for a long time, and gone unanswered. It’s been ten years since anyone received a Gift.”

“Actually,” Harry said, before she had decided to speak, then hastily swallowed before she could add _it’s been more like five._ “It’s been fourteen years since there was a recorded Gift from the Saint of Mercy.”

Remus sighed. “Very well; you’re making my point for me. The road is long, it’s winter, and it isn’t safe. Especially for a girl.” He held up his hand when Harry’s mouth opened in automatic outrage. “I’m not saying it’s _right_ , I’m just saying it’s _true_.”

Harry frowned, breathing out through her nose, and looked down at her thin wrists, her jeans hanging loose and shapeless from her hips, the loose sweatshirt hiding any suggestion of gender, then back up at Remus.

“Then it’s a good thing people usually don’t realize I am one.”

A muscle leapt in Remus’ jaw as it clenched. Then he nodded slightly, as though to himself, and folded his arms. “I’ll see if the Grangers can watch Teddy, and if they say yes, I’ll go with you.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “We could lose the cottage if we leave it empty. You’re always telling me that.”

“I’m certainly not going to let this shack keep you from going to ask for a miracle for your friend, Harry. It’s not that important.”

It _was_ that important, though; a few wrong choices, a few steps backward, could mean life or death for people like them.

“I’ll talk to them first thing in the morning, and maybe we can leave on the weekend,” Remus said.

Harry didn’t dare say anything at all. She was a bad liar, after all. Fortunately, Remus seemed to think they were in accord, and turned away to stir the cabbage and broth on the stove with a little more force than strictly necessary.

Harry’s mind was made up. She’d leave that night, and be well away before Remus even realized she was gone.

* * *

As it turned out, the walk _was_ long, and dangerously cold. But it was also well-traveled with pilgrims, and there was safety in numbers.

On the first day on the road, Harry fell in with six women wearing the peaked caps of the New Faith. Harry had never encountered anyone of the denomination before, but they were kind to her, though she occasionally caught them sneaking fascinated glances at her uncovered—and riotous—hair.

One, who called herself Evenrude, was free with her opinions of the Saints’ silence.

“What no one realizes is that God came long ago—thousands of years ago—and abandoned man then, also. We know He returned only to save us from self-destruction. He desires that we make right decisions and govern ourselves, not depend on His constant mercy.”

Harry tried to look politely interested, but it was hard not to frown. She could tell from Evenrude’s impassioned tone there would be no arguing with her, and did Harry even care to? Why try to dislodge such a deeply-rooted, comforting notion from someone, and spread the shadows of her doubt into an untroubled heart?

They camped on the roadside, and Harry was able to sleep just on the outskirts of Evenrude’s group, whom the other pilgrims and merchants gave a wide berth. She tried not to think of what Remus would think, but his voice and face haunted her all along the journey, all through the six cold, grueling days. There were so many holes in her soles she felt every stone in the road by the time the dizzying spiers of the Mercy City came into view on the seventh morning.

The Mercy City was built in a similar style as the other new villages, including the one where Harry had grown up with the Dursleys, but the stores and houses were in somewhat better repair. Comparing the City to the village of Ottery St Catchpole, where she lived now with Remus and Teddy, was more jarring. No sewage staining the snow; no temporary houses of any sort; more than just a few people with jewelry twinkling on their throats and fingers; whole crowds of bodies with a visible layer of fat, and hardly a sunken cheek in sight.

“We go first to our chapel,” explained Evenrude when they entered the high street. “Good luck to you, Harry.”

“And you,” Harry said, with a sincere half-smile. Evenrude might have notions that Harry couldn’t comprehend, but she had been kind. That was extraordinary in and of itself, in Harry’s experience. She watched the crowds swallow Evenrude and her companions, then looked around to orient herself.

As it turned out, lingering in the crowd was a mistake. Harry was shoved halfway into a merchant’s stall when a not of particularly impatient passers-by elbowed past.

“Sorry,” she murmured to the merchant, who was very tall and very thin, though he had a healthy complexion and his eyes were clear and sharp. He looked her over dismissively, but when Harry helped straighten the contents of the table she’d almost upset, he thanked her.

“What are these things?” she asked, bending over to get a closer look. The man chuckled.

“Haven’t you seen batteries before? No, don’t touch them. They have a good charge; they’re worth more than your life. Go on, boy.”

Harry didn’t bother to correct him. “I’m going to the Cathedral. Is this the right way?”

The merchant frowned at her, the glimmer of goodwill from a few minutes before fading fast. “That’s why you’ve come? Don’t you know there hasn’t been a Gift since before you were born?”

Again, Harry contained her instinct to argue. “Well,” she said, shrugging. “I have to try.”

“All roads lead to the Cathedral,” said the merchant, and gestured with decreasing patience. “Out.”

Harry stole a final glance at the curious silver blocks and cylinders he displayed, then slipped back out onto the street.

The roads were paved in brick, something Harry had never seen before. The cracks felt almost sharp beneath the thin soles of her shoes, the materials were all so new. She followed the road she’d came in on through a few tight curves, and then it widened and there, all at once, was the Cathedral. It was precisely at the city center and, as the merchant had said, therefore all roads did indeed lead to it. The crowd was moving toward the courtyard where the street terminated, and Harry went with them, wishing for the thousandth time she was even average in height, because the press of bodies effectively blinded her to anything but the shoulders and elbows in front of her and to either side.

Fortunately, the Bishop would apparently address them from a balcony three stories up, based upon the position of the bright banners and ribbons framing the carved-stone railing there.

The minutes became an hour, and Harry found herself almost sweating under the bright winter sun, she stood so close to so many people. The air was still and thick with the scent of people who had traveled for miles without a wash. Harry hated to imagine what it would be like to stand here in the height of summer, and tried not to let claustrophobia take hold of her.

Just when she thought she couldn’t bare it another moment, the crowd fell silent and Harry looked up to see the Bishop emerging onto his stage.

He wore robes that were the color of Percy’s, but they were dominated by a sleek fur overcoat that denoted his rank. Details should have been hard to make out from the distance, but Harry found him lovely; so much so that she blushed. She didn’t know herself to be so vulnerable to someone’s looks, much less a man whose temples were brushed with silver. But she saw that the range of his charisma was not unique to Harry. Around her, the pilgrims were quiet, lips parted. It made sense that someone so near the divine might resemble them himself, Harry supposed.

“Treasured people,” called the Bishop, in a voice rich and deep like velvet. “You have come here to call upon our Saint of Mercy, and she awaits you. As her guardian, I ask that you remind yourselves that the will and vision of the Saints has a range which we cannot be expected to contemplate, and that an unanswered prayer is not one which is unheard, or lacks value. When the doors open, come before her and make your plea. Your offerings must be given freely; if you have a change of heart, they will not be returned to you. So take care what you leave at her feet.”

And with that, the doors opened.

Harry had seen drawings of the Cathedral, but they hadn’t prepared her for its conical, alabaster spires, its glittering multicolored Windows, or the double doors at the entrance that towered forty feet high. She craned her head to stare as the stream of pilgrims carried her through them, wondering what manipulated their tremendous weight in order to open and close them.

Inside, the bodies were even slower-moving than in the courtyard; like a human sea, pressed tightly together. Above them was a web of refracted light and ceilings that felt as high as the sky. The Cathedral seemed to be one vast empty space, save the altar above and ahead of them up a few dozen stairs.

And there was the Saint of Mercy’s statue—her perfect likeness. Harry paused at the sight of it, buffeted by the people still trying to strain forward.

But Harry’s feet were planted; she was heedless of the elbows and light shoves. Any doubt in the validity of her experience that night several years before—the night of the Gift—vanished. The face on the statue was exactly as she remembered it.

And as Harry watched, that face, crafted from still and lifeless stone, stirred. The stern mouth relaxed into a faint smile, the blank eyes lit with life, and Harry heard the humming voice more clearly than ever.

_Hello, Harry._

And then lightning struck, and the next moment stretched into an hour. The crack of the lightning swelled and slowed into one long roar. A burst of light grew slowly from a fine point at the Saint’s lips and became a blinding flash. The light lanced through Harry’s head and her heart and lit her veins on fire, and the pain pulled her helplessly into oblivion.


	2. The Chosen One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the supreme beta, trashgoblinwizardparty.

Harry woke feeling like her back was on fire, and that the licking flames had spread into every bone in her body. The deep and penetrating pain plagued her from her teeth to her fingertips.

The sensation was so overwhelming it was all she could think about for a while. Afraid to move, and almost to breathe, she wrestled with her heaving stomach and her hammering heart until she thought she had room in her mind for something else.

Then, Harry opened her eyes. She was lying on her front. Her cheek was pressed against a smooth, ivory sheet, her right hand curled near her nose. There was blood beneath her fingernails, and half-adhering the eyelashes of her left eye to her cheek; she couldn’t quite open it all the way. The rest of her hair was raked back so she could see the blurry shapes that made up the rest of the room.

She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose for a few seconds, then opened them determinedly and tried again.

The room was large; the ceilings were high. She recognized the glossy stone walls as part of the Cathedral, and the windows had the same pale-rose stained glass bordering each pane.

A tall man in a black fur cloak stood with his back to her at one of the windows, his hands resting on the sill.

Harry closed her eyes again. One deep breath, two. She remembered entering the Cathedral. The sight of the Saint of Mercy. A soft, familiar voice and a horrible, unearthly pain.

Relatively speaking, her discomfort now was quite bearable. She opened her eyes. The man still stood at the window. Beneath the edge of the cloak she could see a trailing emerald-green hem, the distinctive shade of the priesthood.

She closed her eyes again. The Bishop. Him, too, she recalled, standing above the pilgrims on his balcony. She slowly wet her cracked lower lip and sank her teeth into it to brace herself, then curled her fingers experimentally.

Even that small movement sent a burst of agony through her entire body, and she whimpered. She heard through the thunder of her pulse the stirring of silk and fur, brisk footsteps on the stone floor, and then a voice. It was a soft, low version of the same one she remembered from standing in the square outside the Cathedral’s entrance. Yes, it was definitely the Bishop there in the room with her.

The thought was surreal, but less so than the fact she had been smote by the Saint of Mercy Herself. It didn’t surprise her, when she considered it, that a Bishop would take a particular interest in someone so spectacularly damned.

“Can you speak?”

Harry was afraid to make a sound. But after she swallowed and only felt the ordinary pain of a dry, sore throat, she rasped carefully, “Yes, sir.”

She opened her eyes and watched him draw up a chair. He was vivid in his lack of coloring; pale skin, black hair. His eyes were so dark brown they could have been mistaken for black too. Harry frowned at the thought that she had never seen anyone quite so clearly before since she’d lost her glasses, and hadn’t been able to pay for a replacement.

“What is your name?”

“Harry, sir.” She sounded like she’d swallowed gravel, but he seemed to understand, though he was frowning thoughtfully.

“You’re very young,” he murmured, like it was a criticism.

“Seventeen,” Harry offered, though he hadn’t asked. “Am I...dying?”

His guarded expression faltered, and he breathed out sharply through his nose. “I think not.” Then he leaned in. “Is it quite painful?”

“Well, yes,” Harry said. “About like being flayed, I’d guess.”

Again, that short breath, something much too refined to be considered a snort. “The marks do appear to be quite inflamed,” he said quietly, clinically, like someone taking notes. “And there was a tremendous amount of blood. Not what I would have expected.”

Harry wondered if the pain was keeping her from tracking the conversation properly. “Has She ever done this before?”

“What do you mean, ‘this’?” His brows rose. “Ah, I see. You don’t understand.” He rose from the chair and crossed to a part of the room from which Harry faced away, so she couldn’t track him. Her gaze fell on the window. Without the Bishop standing in front of it, the sky was easy to see, blue and unconcerned. Midday, or late morning. She wondered how long she’d been lying there. A couple hours? A day?

The Bishop returned with two small objects Harry soon realized were mirrors; as he angled the first one near her face, she caught a disconcerting glimpse of her blood-streaked cheeks and the clear outline of a laceration above her left eye, jagged and unmistakable.

Harry’s entire mind went still. She tried hard not to physically flinch, but it didn’t help; her whole body had gone tense and the pain in her back was radiating everywhere, reignited by every trembling muscle.

“That’s—that can’t be right.”

He spread his arms and held the other mirror so that she could see her own back.

The sight shocked her. She hadn’t realized it at first, distracted as she was by the experience of her body as a single throbbing wound, but her shirt had been trimmed off of her so that she was naked from the waist up, with nothing left to conceal the torn skin and muscle. Someone had made an effort to clean the wounds and they were covered with a viscous dart gold salve, but it was still easy to see that she had been deeply cut, nearly to the bone, in two neat incisions that stretched four inches over each of her shoulder blades.

“I think there’s very little room for dispute,” said the Bishop. He sounded half-bored, as though standing over a bleeding and immobilized Harry was the most mundane of his official duties that day.

Harry remembered the Saint’s voice, not just today, but in Ron’s room the day she decided to leave, and that night years ago with Teddy. It all fit, except for the fact that it was _Harry_ to whom these things had happened. _Harry_ , who knew herself to be the opposite of divine.

Maybe the evidence of the terrible error was this: that the marks were burning her alive.

She opened her eyes. “You’re wrong. I _am_ dying.”

His mouth tightened, and if he was anyone else, she might have thought he was trying not to smile.

“We’ll see.”

Harry closed her eyes again, and this time she didn’t reopen them. Sleep was waiting, and as it drew her down gently, she thought she heard the Saint’s sigh.

_Soon._

_Rest._

_Soon._

* * *

When Harry woke again, she felt slightly better. Though her body was still stiff and nauseated and immobile with pain, her head felt clearer. A boy who couldn’t have been older than twelve was carefully dabbing the blood from her face, and he startled and stepped back when her eyes opened. The reddened water in the little bowl he held sloshed dangerously, but didn’t spill.

“P-pardon me my lady, but I thought…” he looked timidly from Harry to the cloth balled in his hand.

“That was nice of you,” Harry managed, her voice a dry rasp. “Is there any...other...water?”

“Oh! Yes. Of course.” He hurried to the bedside table, where he left his bowl, and then returned with a glass of water and a straw. It had been a long time since Harry had seen anything like the straw: delicate, expensive and disposable. The Dursleys had occasionally brought something like it home when Vernon attended a special function. They set them on the mantel like priceless artifacts: paper napkins with a stamped pattern; shiny flexible forks made of plastic.

At first the straw felt fragile and awkward between her dry lips, and then she stopped worrying about it because her mouth was flooded with water and it was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted.

When she had almost drained the glass, the boy took it back carefully and set it aside, then paused at the table with his hand poised over the cloth. Harry wondered again at how she could see him as clearly now as when he’d been directly in front of her face. Something had definitely happened with her eyes. She scanned the room to test her vision further and realized with a sort of vague delight that there were dark shapes darting somewhere midway between the windowpane and the clouds that must have been birds.

The boy still hadn’t moved and a few long moments had gone by. “I appreciate you washing my face,” Harry said helpfully. Her voice sounded steadier now that she’d had something to drink. “What’s your name?”

“Evan, my lady,” he said. “I’m a page.” He plucked at the sash he wore over his short robes.

Harry managed a half-smile. “I’m not a lady.”

Evan looked more doubtful yet. “They said I should tell them if you woke, my lady. Um.” he paused and blushed miserably.

“You can call me Harry,” she offered. His reaction was instantaneous, somewhere between laughter and horror. He swallowed and made a visible effort to clear his face, which left him wide-eyed and red-cheeked.

“It’s all right,” Harry said, closing her eyes for a moment, which helped ease the throbbing in her head. “It’s a funny name for a girl, I know.”

“It’s a nice name, my lady.”

Harry opened her eyes with her brows raised in gentle rebuke, and Evan fidgeted but obediently corrected himself.

“I mean, H-Harry,” he got out, then immediately added, “I don’t think I’m allowed to call you that.”

“Says who?”

He stared at her a half-moment, then replied in a furious whisper. “The _Tome_.” Harry frowned and closed her eyes again. She didn’t remember much detail from the Tome; but then, it wasn’t something she’d learned by heart. Her study had been halfhearted, in the manner of a ten-year-old skeptic, during the confirmation that her aunt and uncle had insisted upon just before she went to live with Remus.

(But everyone knew the story to a certain extent. It was a feature not only in the Tome, but in the tapestries and stained-glass scenes and the murals in so many places of worship. A woman, arms raised, blood on her tunic and a distinctive mark on her forehead.)

Harry tended to react to the curiosity over her name with the stubborn thought that it was no one’s business, and volunteered no explanation at all. But it was hard to be irritated with Evan. “I’ll tell you, if you want to know, why I’m called Harry.”

She opened her eyes to find Evan nodding shyly. He sat back down in his chair, and she tried not to think about her bare chest and her cramped arms. At least, lying on her stomach, no one could see _everything_. And anyway, Evan didn’t seem interested in anything about her except the marks on her back and forehead, where his eyes kept darting, bright with disbelief.

“While my mother was pregnant,” Harry began, “she always thought I was a boy. She was _sure_. She told everyone in her family: ‘This baby is a boy, and his name is Harry.’”

Harry had drawn a portrait of her mother from random things her aunt said over the years, and which Harry hoarded like pieces to the most precious of puzzles. All she knew for sure was that Lily Evans had red hair; every other feature Harry conjured from other evidence. The firm jaw from the story of her mother appearing with bloodied, bare feet on the Dursleys’ doorstep, having walked a great distance, and never once mentioning her wounds. The slight height a best guess, as Petunia and Harry were both petite. Her soft eyes from the knowledge her mother had sewn a letter into the baby’s blanket that was all she had to leave Harry. It contained a single poem Harry had internalized when she was old enough to read but still too young to know the meaning of all the words.

“My mother died just after I was born, but her family remembered what she’d said my name would be.”

Aunt Petunia refused to speak about Harry’s mother to Harry, beyond saying, as evidence of Lily’s insanity, that she had insisted Harry would be a boy, and he would be called Harry. If it was true, and Harry hoped it was, then granting Harry that name when her mother died in childbed was the single promise to her sister that Petunia had deigned to keep, even though Petunia, naturally, would have perceived it as a final slight upon the sister she detested.

Evan frowned. “You’re an orphan,” he said quietly.

Harry thought of the Tome and closed her eyes. “I guess you knew that part already.”

She felt the tentative brush of the cold cloth on the tender skin of her forehead, and didn’t interrupt Evan as he carefully cleaned her face, the only sounds their breathing and the water moving in the bowl. Harry fell asleep again before he finished.

* * *

Harry dreamed she was walking down a path so dark, she couldn’t see anything surrounding her. Or rather, there _was_ nothing around her. The path was clear, stretching off into the distance. But to either side and above there was only a blank void.

In the middle-distance, something parted the emptiness. A circle of light and color, like a bubble, attached to the anchorpoint of the path. Harry walked toward it.

The scene became more clear the nearer she got. It was a room, and not any room, but the living room at the Weasleys’. Two people sat across from one another in the old, traditional Wingback chairs she knew well. One had a blanket on their lap, a colorful tapestry made up of bits of whatever castaway yarn and fabric Molly could find.

Harry heard the murmur of voices clearly as she got closer.

“...Harry…”

“Do you…?”

She recognized the voices before she was could make out their faces. Ron and Hermione. Ron must be well enough to be downstairs, she noted with amazement, but her heart fell again at the telltale marks of sickness on his face. His complexion was grey and his eyes were red-rimmed. He kept his shoulders hunched as though cold, despite the blazing fire and the blanket.

“Where do you think she is?”

Harry broke into a run down the path. In this dream she’d left behind the pains of her injured body, and behind her she felt a forceful gathering and stretching that she didn’t pause to consider. She only let her eagerness propel her, lifting her feet from the ground, a coil of wind carrying her.

Carrying her by her wings.

Harry could see them in her peripheral vision, long and white-feathered, black-tipped, beating instinctively to take her where she desired to go.

It was only a dream.

But when she hovered before the bubble that contained Hermione and Ron and the chairs and the fire, the familiar room in the Burrow was so detailed, Harry wondered...

Hermione and Ron didn’t see her, but their voices and the crackling fire were in her ears, as close and clear as though she stood in the room with them.

“When she was here last, she had a carving of some Saint,” Ron said, with a faint smile. “She didn’t think I saw, but I woke up for a few minutes before she left. She was praying over it, I think. I’ve never seen Harry pray.”

Hermione rested her forehead on her arms. “Maybe it’s true, then? That she went to the Cathedral, like Remus said?”

Ron shrugged, and looked bitter. “If she did, I guess I appreciate the thought. But I’d rather have her here, in case…”

Hermione’s head jerked up and she looked furious. “Don’t finish whatever you were about to say.”

Ron smiled a guileless smile. “Hermione...”

“No,” she insisted. Her face was flushed with color. She got up, walked over and dropped to her knees, placing her hands over his on the arms of his chair. “No,” she repeated.

Ron looked down at her, attention totally arrested. “It’s not like I have a say,” he said with a half-smile. “It’s not like any of this was my idea.”

Hermione let out a single miserable laugh. “You…” she began, shaking her head fondly, eyes bright with tears...

The sight of them was fading fast. Their voices quickly grew so faint Harry couldn’t make anything else out. Somehow, Harry knew they receded because no one in that room was thinking about Harry anymore, and it was only the thought of her that had made them appear along her path at all.

After all, wasn’t that the nature of prayer?

* * *

Harry woke up again knowing she had to get home. Her back hurt worse than ever and her limbs were leaden, but Harry pushed herself up from the mattress anyway.

The response from her body was instant and made her hiss. Her back burned, her vision swam, and her arms lost strength at once so she flopped back down where she’d started.

“I wouldn’t do that until you’ve healed,” remarked an indifferent-sounding voice that Harry would know anywhere as the Bishop’s.

Harry turned her face toward him. He sat in the chair at her bedside where she’d last seen Evan, his elbows on his thighs and his fingers steepled before him. There was a heavy blanket on his lap, and for the first time Harry realized that the room was cold. She must have been feverish before.

“When do you intend to take care of...that?” the Bishop asked with a gesture toward her back and the faintest grimace. “Or can you not heal yourself?”

The question surprised Harry. “Of course I can’t,” she said immediately. “Why would you…?”

Oh.

“I don’t think I can do any of those things,” she said. “I’ve tried. To help people.” _It only worked once_ , she almost said. She should have been more intimidated by the Bishop, more formal. But lying there bare-skinned in the dark made her experience an odd intimacy with him instead.

“But you haven’t tried since the Marking.”

The word made Harry frown. The last person she’d heard use _that_ word from the Tome was Aunt Petunia. It was almost funny, imagining what Aunt Petunia would say if she saw Harry’s face now, when she had always lamented Harry as the furthest thing from godliness.

Harry squirmed. “I think that was a mistake.”

He tilted his head. “Gods do not make mistakes.”

If _that_ was in the Tome, Harry didn’t remember anyone telling her about it. She thought of the woman in the drawings. How she seemed transcendent, how her streaming wounds didn’t seem to bother her in the least. Harry looked at the Bishop frankly.

“Do you really think this is how it’s supposed to happen? That _I’m_ who it was supposed to happen to?”

After all, there were women in the Church, too; everyone assumed that it would be one of them who was Chosen.

He looked her over thoughtfully, impersonally. But still, she felt suddenly hot and mortified beneath his gaze. When their eyes met again, she could tell he was studying the mark on her face, too.

“Gods do not make mistakes.”

Harry huffed. She felt cramped and uncomfortable, unable to resist the urge to fidget, yet every time she moved her back stung fiercely.

“I need to go home,” she told the Bishop.

His only reaction was a raised brow.

“Is there some kind of transport you know of that I can pay for later?”

The Bishop laced his fingers together, crossed his legs and placed his hands on his elevated knee. “No.”

“No?”

“You cannot go,” he clarified.

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You must remain here. You belong to the Church, and as I am the arm of the Church which has...discovered you...you are my responsibility.”

Harry was accustomed to people believing they knew what was best for her, but the way he spoke—so matter-of-fact—felt like an expression of ownership that she hadn’t encountered before.

“I ‘belong to the Church’?” she repeated softly.

The Bishop nodded. “Of course.”

Harry closed her eyes and tried to stay silent as she vibrated with the urge to fight or flee. It was only the idea that, even if she _could_ leap to her feet, she’d be unarmed (and naked from the waist up) that kept her from trying.

“You should rest,” the Bishop said, totally heedless of her reaction. Harry didn’t look, but she heard him leave the room: his footsteps, then the snick of the door.

Harry couldn’t possibly have fallen asleep again, not given her racing thoughts or the tension that still hummed in every muscle. She made herself wait for what felt like several hours, but was probably less than one, before she steeled herself to try getting up again.

It was late at night; that was obvious based on the perfect darkness of the sky outside, the only light in the room the wash of moon and starlight. She didn’t know how long she had before someone returned.

This time she only lifted herself a half inch, then waited for the wave of nausea to pass before bending her knees the slightest amount too. From that position she could sidle to the edge of the bed and slide off of it and onto her feet.

Slowly, she stood upright, her upper body bare, blood trickling from her cracked-open wounds to pool in the small of her back. She shivered.

The idea of not only getting across the room, but somehow all the way back down the road to her village, was dizzying in and of itself.

The pain subsided somewhat, becoming easier to bear with every second as her body adjusted to being upright. Still, the first few steps were terrible. She’d never realized how the muscles in her back were a part of each step, each breath.

There was a spare blanket folded on a chair near the bedside. Harry paused, managing to make only a soft whimper as she bent carefully to pick it up, and somehow wrapped it loosely over her shoulders. The feeling of the fabric settling on her wounds was almost the worst part, and she leaned against the chair back for several long moments afterward to catch her breath. Then she found her boots, set neatly against the wall, and stepped into them clumsily since she couldn’t possibly bend over that far.

Clothed, or as close as she could manage, she considered the door.

Would there be someone keeping watch on the other side? The Bishop hadn’t seemed to realize she was determined to leave, so maybe she wasn’t being treated as a prisoner. Yet.

She hobbled in that direction and didn’t let herself hesitate when she got there, instead opening the door slowly and peering through the narrow opening at the darker corridor beyond.

She heard and saw nothing, so she slipped through, sucking in a breath when her left shoulder grazed the doorframe.

A light came alive in the corridor and illuminated the Bishop, sitting in a chair facing the door and gazing at her with his untroubled dark eyes.

Harry was fascinated by the device he held. Electric, it had to be, but she only knew the technology by reputation. It was like an oil lamp, but the light was steady and unwavering and had been fully ignited in an instant.

“On your feet,” he observed, calmly standing as well. He was quite tall, and if Harry hadn’t felt disadvantaged already by the fact she was injured and wearing nothing but shoes, bloodstained jeans and a blanket, she would have simply by the discrepancy in their respective sizes. She shuddered and looked up at him, trying not to let any of her uncertainty show.

He lifted his lamp to better illuminate Harry’s face. “But still not healed,” he added, with a disappointed little frown. His eyes moved over her cheeks and throat, which she could imagine were pale. She clutched the blanket higher against her collarbone.

“I need to go home,” she said quietly, fervently.

His frown deepened. “You should consider this your home from now on.”

The thought was appalling. Everyone here was a stranger, and even the well-meaning child Evan hadn’t seen Harry but for her forehead and back. If Harry had ever thought to imagine the opposite of a home, this would have been it. She thought of her brief vision of the Burrow and the itching need to be moving in its direction rose up with more force still.

“My friend needs me,” she added. He was a Bishop, wasn’t he? Didn’t the Church claim to be led by empaths? “He’s ill. I came here to pray for him.”

“You cannot leave.”

“He could die!”

He looked at her shrewdly, his face ash and ivory in the lamplight. “And what are you going to do about it? You can’t even heal yourself.”

Harry gaped at him. “If I really am... _her_...then don’t you have to do what I say?”

The Bishop paused at that, looking thoughtful. “No,” he decided after a moment. “The Tome says nothing about that. Now, return to your room before you strain yourself.”

“The Tome doesn’t say she answers to Bishops, either!” Harry snapped. In fact, she wasn’t sure whether she was right or wrong. She really needed to reread the passages. “You can’t make me stay here if I don’t want to!”

His eyes seemed to darken, but it was probably just the light shifting as he lowered the lamp back to his side. “Of course I can.”

Harry broke and ran.

The Bishop was surprised and unmoving for a long moment. Then his lamp dropped with a crash and she knew he was pursuing her. Logically, it should be impossible to outrun him; but her determination to get away had overcome the pain in her back, and she had always been fast.

However, speed didn’t matter in a maze, and after turning a few blind corners she nearly toppled over the first step in a curved staircase, only saving herself by scrambling for the bannister in the last breathless moment. She caught it in one hand and as she stumbled on the first step, more or less fell against it where she clung with both hands. That delay was all the Bishop needed to catch her.

Harry hadn’t even gotten her feet back beneath her before the Bishop grasped her around the waist and dragged her back off the stairs and against his chest. The pressure on her wounds made her gasp.

“Ridiculous child,” he growled. His body was narrow but firm, the black fur of his cloak silky on Harry’s back, which was half-bared; her blanket had gone askew while she fled and hung off one shoulder. Harry lifted her hands to claw at his forearms where they were locked around her waist, but he had her caught tight, and all she succeeded in doing was intensifying the pressure on her back to a point where she saw stars.

“Let me go!” she panted, but she was weak and the short sprint had taken the last of her energy, so he easily caught and held her wrists together in one strong hand.

“What did you think would happen if you got out onto the streets, half-naked in the snow?” he demanded in a low voice, giving her a hard shake for emphasis. “What good are you to anyone if you get yourself killed?”

Though he almost certainly wasn’t talking about Ron, his words made Harry think of him. Ron, Hermione, Remus and Teddy, the other Weasleys, her other friends. She did need to return to them, but the Bishop was right; she’d been stupid to think running away was realistic.

As that thought coalesced, she was pulled from it by the Bishop suddenly holding her away from him and rewrapping the blanket more firmly over her shoulders. Harry’s knees would have buckled, but he caught her around the waist again and then, after a moment’s hesitation, picked her up. He had one arm behind her knees and the other around her shoulders. Harry could only bite her lip to keep from making a sound when the new position wreaked fresh hell on her back. She wilted against him, her chin dropping onto his fur-clad shoulder, and then the reality of her position struck her and she felt a last wave of desperate fury.

“Put me down,” she hissed, digging her elbow into the Bishop’s chest and raking at his arm with her opposite hand. She felt a thrill when she found a strip of skin at his wrist to dig her fingernails into and he jumped. He didn’t put her down; instead, he held her tighter. He caught her wrist in a bruising grip, and wrenched her arm back in a way that flexed every muscle in her shoulder and brought on a wave of new pain.

Harry went limp, hovering right on the edge of unconsciousness. She felt just outside her body, detached from its pain and worries, and yet still aware of herself. Her every muscle was lax, her head lolled back against the Bishop’s shoulder, the thick fur of the cloak parting under her cheek.

From here, this place not-quite-beyond herself, it was easier than anything to will her skin to stitch back together, and the throbbing angry muscles to knit; for her bruises to clear and her pulse to slow.

“We will speak again when you’ve come to terms with your responsibilities,” said the Bishop, carrying her through the darkness toward her room. His voice summoned her back into her bones as though she had never left. Except now the pain was gone, and there was nothing to do but drift to sleep as though being tightly cradled against him was the most natural thing in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'd love to hear what you thought! <3


	3. Her Red Garments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a million to mith for the beta <3

“You have to let me in!” hissed a child’s voice. Harry, eyes still closed, did her best to seem asleep and listened carefully.

“No!” Evan whisper-shouted back. “The Bishop says only I can be in here.” There was a soft grunt, and then the other boy swore.

“You’re going to close my fingers in the door!”

“Then you’d better move them,” Evan advised. Harry heard a last muffled cry from the other boy before the unmistakable sound of a door striking its frame. She opened one eye.

Across the room, both palms pressed flat against the door, Evan stood with his shoulders quaking. The other boy, who Harry assumed was another page, gave the door a final frustrated thump from the other side, but the knob didn’t rattle. After a few long moments Evan turned from the door and saw Harry watching him.

“Good morning, my Lady. Are you okay?” he asked, slowly walking a few steps closer, then pausing with his hands in his robe pockets.

Harry was lying on her side, where she’d shifted naturally in her sleep, the blanket from the night before tight around her. She felt wonderful. Almost better than she could ever remember, without a hint of soreness or tiredness anywhere in her body. The only complaint she had was...

Her stomach growled loudly as though on cue. Evan’s eyes widened and his hand flew to his mouth, but Harry still clearly heard his giggle. She smiled as she slowly sat up, holding the blanket in place around her. She could smell blood and sweat on the blanket and on herself, but even as she tentatively moved she found that it hadn’t just been a trick of her imagination when the Bishop caught her. Her wounds were healed.

“Here,” he said quietly, bringing over a tray from the table by the door. He set it tentatively on the bed before Harry and stepped back. Harry remembered from the tray being in the room the day before. Then, she hadn’t been tempted by the sliced fruit, bread, and cheese arranged there, but now she snatched a few things eagerly.

“I’m okay,” she told Evan, noticing he was still watching her.

“Well, I know your back is better,” Evan murmured, his smile falling away and a wrinkle appearing in his forehead. “I meant are you okay, because I heard...last night…” he trailed off uncertainly and looked at his feet.

Harry felt goosebumps prickle on her arms. At the thought of what that chase might have sounded like—and at the idea that while Evan and the other pages couldn’t have intervened, there were plenty of priests in the Cathedral who had also done nothing to help her.

“I’m sorry you heard that,” Harry said earnestly. “But yes, I’m okay.” And she was, she found. The adrenaline that she recalled from the experience was gone, and in its wake she felt no fear, either of the Bishop or her circumstances. Only a strong resolve to find another way to get out of here and back home, closely followed by doubt that she could manage to do any of it alone. But, it was infinitely more possible now that she didn’t have serious injuries. “I could use some more clothes, though,” she added, adjusting the blanket around herself.

Evan’s eyes widened. “Of course. I’ll get you some, Lady Harry.”

“I’m not...” Harry began, then sighed. “Thanks, Evan. And some shoes.”

He nodded eagerly.

“Who were you speaking to, just now?”

Evan’s pleasant expression morphed at once into a scowl. “Aaron. He keeps trying to help me with my chores, but I know he just wants to spy on you for his priest. That’s why the Bishop said I’m the only one who may assist you.”

“Oh?” Harry asked carefully.

Evan nodded.

Harry thought of all she knew of the Church. Openly speaking against the Church wasn’t common, but there was plenty of muttering to overhear; brief disgruntled discussions when people thought no one could hear them. The Church wasn’t universally respected. The only person Harry personally knew in the priesthood was Percy, whose ambitions had never flattered him in her eyes.

If the Chosen One had been Made, then shouldn’t the Bishop be parading her through the streets? Shouldn’t the Godspeaker be making an announcement, shouldn’t the entire world be celebrating? Harry still couldn’t bring herself to fully believe she was the Chosen One promised in the Tome, but it was harder and harder to deny in light of all the evidence.

Harry thought of the expectation she should somehow bridge the world of humans and gods, and her head began to hurt. She could barely exercise the Saint of Mercy’s purest power. She didn’t feel like the vessel for world salvation. Not at all.

Suddenly she felt new urgency in her need to get away. Not only did she need to help Ron, she needed time to process what was happening before she was forced out onto some sort of stage for the Church, which had to be imminent, especially now that she wasn’t struggling just to survive her wounds.

“Does the Bishop know I’m better?”

Evan, looking guilty, nodded.

“But no one else knows?”

Evan shook his head.

“But they know what happened in the Cathedral?” Looking back, the events were hard to mistake for anything but the Marking. How could the Bishop be keeping word quiet?

Evan fidgeted. Looking at the door then back at Harry, he lowered his voice. “He has received letters,” he admitted. “But my Lord has also said that none of the priests are to speak of what happened, and that he will answer all of the inquiries from the capital. But the people know,” Evan added, sounding proud, and gestured toward the window.

Harry looked, but only saw sky and diving birds until she stepped out of the bed and walked nearer. Then the city was visible, and the sight of it made her catch her breath.

At first, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. She had no basis for comparison; never had she stood in a tower with a bird’s eye view of a place, and never had she seen so many fine buildings from any angle. The scope of the city was a shock.

But then she realized that had she taken in this view days ago, something would have been different.

From nearly every window, and wrapped around the lamp posts on nearly every street, were vivid red scarves and cloth. The shades varied somewhat, given the variability of dye, or the fact some things were freshly made and others were salvaged from existing red fabric, but the banners were unmistakable. See altogether like this, they made the entire city look like a body, veined in blood. Blood red; the Chosen One’s color.

Harry stepped back again until all of it was safely out of sight.

“The people know that the Saints have given us their greatest Gift,” Evan said quietly, his eyes shining. Harry’s heart felt heavy but she managed, somehow, to look at him and smile. Then she turned away to hide her face and rub her warm cheeks with her chilly hands. All her life she’d felt an extra weight on her shoulders and learned how to tolerate it, but _this_ —it felt like more than anyone could reasonably bear.

* * *

That night, when Evan finally went off to wherever he slept, Harry went to the door and leaned her forehead against it. Since the only way to know was to look, she opened the door but didn’t step through it.

It was dark inside the room, but again, not as dark as the hallway. The night before she’d been desperate with pain and shock, and hadn’t even attempted to let her vision adjust. Now she made herself wait.

The shadows shifted and deepened, gaining depth and shape. She could see a band of distant light from some window beyond the corridor, grazing a high point on the wall where a landscape hung. The corner was visible. Within the gilded frame, Harry could see a triangle of misty sky, pink-tinted clouds, and the silhouette of a man wearing a fine hat.

Across from the door to her room, where the Bishop had sat the night before, there was only perfect darkness. It was an inky emptiness so complete it made Harry think of deep lake water, where they’d told Teddy monsters were sure to lurk. It was just meant to scare him out of swimming where it wasn’t safe, of course, but the funny thing about children’s stories was how they took more power than anyone had intended to give them. How even their inventors came to shudder and look twice at every shadow. Any story, once told, could take on a life all its own.

“Are you there?” she asked. She hadn’t meant to whisper, but that’s how it came out. A loud, harsh whisper against the silky silence. Hearing it, Harry winced.

The Bishop said, “Yes.”

Unlike Harry’s, his voice sounded even, smooth, untroubled. He leaned forward and the shape and texture of his face and shoulders surfaced from the darkness.

His loveliness didn’t shock her like it once had, but she was still struck by the fact of it. Each time she’d seen him, she’d later doubted her own memory. But here he was, etched from shadow and moonlight, a beautiful phantom.

“Are you going to spend every night outside my door?” Harry snapped before she could think about it.

“For now.” If he’d never been flustered in his life, Harry wouldn’t have been surprised. The coolness of his exterior seemed to be a perfect fit for whatever he kept inside.

A flash of memory corrected her: the Bishop, growling a reprimand and holding her wrists in his vice-grip, his body surprisingly supple and warm against hers.

Harry felt a flash of something strange; or rather, she _perceived_ it, like a new sense. It rolled off the Bishop, invisible and silent and apparent nonetheless—curiosity. A vein of something more than just that— _fascination_. And blanketing it all—a layer of definite doubt.

“You don’t think I’m her, either,” Harry blurted.

The Bishop’s brows rose, and though it was a subtle thing, still Harry felt strangely satisfied at having disturbed his mask.

“What makes you say that?”

Harry couldn’t have described that sense from a moment before if she’d tried. And she would have hesitated regardless to share it with the Bishop. She felt like he would take everything from her, even the new and strange contents of her thoughts and dreams, if she let him. So she kept it close for now.

“You haven’t sent word to the Godspeaker,” Harry answered. It wasn’t a lie; she’d had that thought earlier that day after all. “And you haven’t made a proclamation.”

“Bishops don’t make proclamations.”

Harry frowned, distinctly remembering _priests_ making them at her village. The Bishop noticed her confusion.

“The Godspeaker makes proclamations, and the other arms of the Church repeat them.” He sounded faintly bitter. “I’m surprised to hear how much you know of my actions and inactions. Perhaps I chose the wrong page to tend to you.” He looked away for a moment and his jaw tightened as though it was more than just Evan’s compatibility with Harry that was frustrating him.

“I like him,” Harry hastened to say. “Leave him alone,” she added, and at her tone the Bishop looked at her again, speculatively.

“Interesting. The Tome didn’t mention your virtues, but I suppose they would align with your patron Saint’s.”

“What Saint wouldn’t want to protect a child who has been loyal to them?”

“Most Saints care little for children at all,” said the Bishop dismissively. “Now, we’ve dallied long enough. Return to bed.”

It was strange—quite strange—that while Harry’s hackles rose at the way he ordered her around, she also felt a wave of prickly heat course over her. It was a distinctly human feeling, yet not one Harry could recall feeling before. She tried not to think about it too carefully, since when she did the feeling seemed to stretch over more of her skin and permeate more deeply toward her bones.

“I’m not tired,” she muttered, but started to close the door. “Good night, then.”

The Bishop sank back into the darkness. “Good night.”

* * *

In the world where Harry had wings, she drifted along the path. The road remained dark, but with half-formed, blurry points along the way where she heard distorted voices and saw a suggestion of form, like bodies beneath a blanket. Like before, a bright and perfectly-whole scene existed halfway up the path, the people inside it faintly audible even from a considerable distance. Harry flew there.

It was strange that having wings felt so much like having arms and legs. She didn’t consciously work the various mechanisms that composed them, only thought of moving—soaring—and her body accommodated.

She was fast in the air, but stayed close to the path, intimidated by what felt like a void in all directions, and the strange ripples where something or someone clearly _was_ , but which she couldn’t make out.

Instead of a room in the Burrow, Harry recognized the garden at Hermione’s. Their cottage was fairly well-made; her parents both worked hard and steadily. There was a layer of snow on everything. The Grangers were bundled in grey coats and faded scarves. Remus wore the thin jacket Harry was anxious he replace, but he was stubborn.

Next to him Teddy strained against his hand like a kite on a string, wanting to go play among the Grangers’ toolshed and little shuttered greenhouse. When he visited with Harry, he pretended it was a city and he was its senior priest.

“You’re sure about this?” Remus asked the Grangers. They nodded solemnly.

“Anything for Harry,” said Mr. Granger firmly, and bent down to speak to Teddy. When the little boy paused to listen, Remus reluctantly let go of his hand.

“It should only be a week or so, if all goes…” Remus trailed off and his brow furrowed. Harry felt a pang of regret for worrying him, even as she yearned for someone to mention Ron. Was he better? Was he worse? Was he—

Teddy sprinted toward the garden and Mr. and Mrs. Granger followed. Remus watched them go. Harry hovered outside the bubble, then coasted back and forth. Remus was coming. Her initial reaction was excitement, followed closely by concern.

Remus was looking up at the sky, a habit he had when his mood was pensive. Harry missed him bitterly, looking at the familiar scars on his face which seemed particularly stark in light like this, silver and raised.

“Maybe I should have listened,” Harry murmured to herself. The last thing she expected was for Remus to hear her.

He turned his head sharply in her direction and for a moment, Harry was sure their eyes met.

“Remus!” she repeated, anxious and hopeful. “Can you hear me?”

But his expression was shifting to rueful regret, like he had himself convinced he’d only imagined her. And slowly but surely that strange spherical window from this world to that one dimmed and disappeared.

That left Harry above the path, now totally dark and almost quiet save those faint, quaking whispers from the places that seemed to agitate and move. She descended to the path, the only tangible surface. It felt surprisingly solid and cool under her bare feet, much more realistic than a dream.

 _Where am I?_ she wondered, bending down to touch a gap between the paving stones. Her wings spread behind her to compensate for their weight.

There was a noise above her like the beating of her own wings, but more tremendous. She cautiously looked up into the emptiness, her heart in her throat. The force of the current twisted her hair into her eyes and made her own wings strain until she folded them tightly against her back, crouching closer to the path.

She was seized by the same instinct that makes a mouse freeze and hold its breath when an owl is overhead. But with her face upturned and her eyes searching frantically, she convinced herself there was nothing there. And even if there was, it couldn’t hurt her. After all, what else could this be but a dream?

* * *

In the morning, Harry woke early from fitful rest and watched the sun rise through her window, bracing herself for the sight of the red banners. They still made her uneasy, but she could manage her reaction better today. She noticed there was a small stack of new clothing folded on a stool, and a pair of sturdy shoes.

In just a couple of days, as Evan had said and the banners had suggested, the City was livelier even than before. From the window it was easy to observe the leagues of pilgrims, far more than had accompanied Harry. The crowd was already dense in the square, and a steady stream of new arrivals surged there from the congested streets between the Cathedral and the gates.

It was hard to believe that just recently, Harry had been one of them. Part of a much larger whole and, from this high, indiscernible from the flood of people.

Had the Bishop’s gaze brushed over her head, unable to separate one unruly head of hair, not realizing what events would so soon unfold?

As though cued by her thought of him, the Bishop stepped into the balcony, just visible from where Harry stood at the window of her tower. And Harry’s thoughts ground to a halt to make way for a sudden realization.

The Bishop wasn’t outside her door.

The priests were rowed along the parapet; none of them were outside her door, either.

Harry hurriedly pulled on the shirt, trousers and shoes on the stool. Everything was very simple, but obviously new and made of fine fabrics that carried a strange, silky weight. Harry felt instantly better with clothing on; she hadn’t realized how there had been a vague, steady uneasiness in the simple vulnerability of going around uncovered. The shoes were slightly too small, but Harry was used to the feeling. The soles were soft, and Harry remembered Percy explaining that his Church-issued shoes had rubber soles. Harry had been too proud to ask what that meant, and still didn’t know.

She crossed the room then pulled open the door. Sure enough, no one was on the other side. She let out a long, soft breath and slipped into the hallway. Her heart pounding, Harry quietly closed the door, but the gentle thud and click sounded incredibly loud in the high-ceilinged silence of the corridor. Still, no one appeared. Her steps made almost no sound in her new, flexible shoes.

Sunlight poured through the high windows, lighting up the entire space. Somehow, though, Harry was just as confused as she had been in the dark. She knew where she was in orientation to the public entrance, but she could hardly go there…could she?

Harry remembered the press of people and how she’d thought, from her window, that if she were amongst the pilgrims the Bishop wouldn’t know her. If she could get down into the vestibule with the statue, then perhaps she could get lost in the crowd, and let the human tide carry her back out into the City.

There wasn’t a clear path in the direction of the main entrance, though; there were two curved corridors that led to a staircase, which must have been the same one that Harry had almost tumbled down when she was running from the Bishop. She took each step down with her heart pounding, expecting around each curve to meet someone going up. She didn’t.

As she descended, the silence gradually gave way to a steady hum of voices and movement from the people in the chamber with the Saint’s statue. Harry tried to follow the noise when she reached the landing, totally disoriented, down one of three forking hallways.

The uncarpeted stone was smooth and glossy. Marble, Harry thought. The seams were several feet apart, indicating it had been laid in enormous slabs that could only be manipulated by something with inhuman strength. The height and angle of the ceilings, and all the smooth surfaces in each room, played tricks on her ears. For the most part the murmur of the procession of pilgrims was a single wall of sound, but occasionally a voice would separate from the others, as clearly as though it was in her ear.

_“. . . please let my children be safe . . . “_

_“Forgive me, my Lady, for my doubts.”_

_“. . . if you’ve seen my Sarah, send her home . . . “_

Harry had always felt strange when she overheard prayers. Even Petunia, whom Harry disliked more than anyone in the world, seemed entitled to that particular privacy. But even as Harry automatically ignored the voices out of guilty instinct, she felt each word strike her heart like an arrow. It wasn’t eavesdropping when you were the one that the prayer was meant to reach.

She paused at that thought, shook herself, and looked for some kind of side entrance into the chamber. As she walked, she absently ran her fingertips along the smooth marble wainscot upon the wall that was now the only thing separating her from the crowd.

Harry felt it before she saw it: a seam beneath her fingertips. She came to an abrupt halt, searching the wall with her eyes, but what she felt she couldn’t see, even with her enhanced eyesight. The separation in wood and marble was so minimal it felt like a hairline under her fingertip, but she traced it up past her head, and when she tentatively pushed with both palms, the hidden door opened inward.

Unfortunately, this time there wasn’t an empty corridor on the other side of the door. A woman, unmistakably a priest by her garb, stood there. She held her hand outstretched as though she’d been about to open the door from the other side. Her hair was dark like Harry’s, and her skin as pale, but in every other way they were opposites. The woman was older, perhaps as old as Remus or Harry’s aunt, and lovely, but with a cool self-possession that was obvious even in a moment of surprise.

“Where do you think you’re going?” She gave Harry a cursory once-over from her right shoulder to her knees and back. “The pages should be doing inventory with the Priest Rosier.”

“I’m,” Harry began, but didn’t continue, because just then the woman’s gaze caught on Harry’s forehead, and she went a shade paler. Harry had forgotten about the lightning-shaped mark.

“What sort of sacrilege is this?” the woman murmured, color blazing back into her cheeks and her eyes narrowing dangerously. She was a few inches taller than Harry, but suddenly seemed to tower over her. She advanced a few fast steps and Harry instinctively rushed backwards. They both stood in the main corridor, staring at each other, Behind her, the priest had left open the hidden door.

Harry took a step to her right, the priest took a step forward, and then Harry put her head down and charged. It was a good call. The priest spoke like a lady, and was obviously raised as one too. Harry was not. So when Harry lowered her shoulder and struck the priest a glancing blow in passing, the priest was totally unprepared. The wind knocked out of her, she stumbled aside while Harry sprinted headlong into the side hallway past the door.

It was dim, but Harry could see light around a curve. She ran until she saw a strange light above another door, turned the handle and slipped through, closing it behind her.

Past this door, at last, was the crowded chamber she’d meant to reach. Harry finally seemed to have a turn of luck; the people that she emerged amongst were turned away. Though she attracted a few sidelong looks, no one seemed to realize she’d stepped out of what appeared to be a solid wall. But Harry didn’t doubt the priest she’d just assaulted would be in close pursuit, so she elbowed her way deeper into the crowd as forcefully as she could without being too disruptive, her head bent so her hair fell into her eyes, safely covering her mark.

There were two parts of the crowd; those waiting for their turn to leave offerings and prayer, and those streaming back toward the entrance. Harry was in the former, but after a few long moments, expecting some sort of alarm to be sounded at any time, she reached the press back toward the entrance, and tried to conceal herself within it. There were a handful of particularly tall pilgrims, and Harry more or less wedged herself behind them, trying not to notice the red scarves they’d tied around their heads.

The men wore soft hide shirts delicately embroidered with white stitching. Harry made out the shape of a large bird spreading across their shoulders, with a long fanned tail. One of them was a woman, as tall as the others, and drawn in the white stitches on her shirt was an elephant with a curled trunk. They were speaking quietly to each other in a language Harry didn’t know. She stayed close behind, looking left and right. She couldn’t make out the part of the wall with the door she’d come through any longer. The crowd had reformed around it, and there was no way to know whether the priest had pursued her. Maybe she’d gone directly to the Bishop to alert him.

Or maybe not, Harry thought with cautious hope. Maybe the priest had just believed Harry was an unruly page who’d marked her face as a prank.

Harry scanned the room as surreptitiously as she could, and as she looked over her shoulder, made the mistake of also looking _up_.

 _Harry_ , said the Saint of Mercy, clearly in her ear. _Stay_.

Harry turned her head resolutely forward, face hot.

The woman in the group Harry was trailing glanced over her shoulder and down at Harry; Harry hastily tilted her face away and pulled self-consciously at her fringe, which so far remained safely in place, brushing her eyebrows and keeping the mark hidden.

_Do not fight. Give yourself._

The woman’s eyes felt like they lingered, but then she turned back to her companions and spoke in the same measured tone she had before, as though unaffected. Harry let out a shaky breath. They moved nearer the doors and though Harry’s shoulders felt a sympathetic, phantom pain, there was no crack of lightning, and no one else seemed to hear the Saint’s voice.

 _Stay_. 

Harry heard the sound of creaking wood and straining rope as the doors to the outside began to close. And she realized, suddenly, that the clothing she had been wearing, simple and undyed, was now brightest red. A sudden lump formed in her throat, too large to swallow.

Ahead of her, the pilgrims spoke to one another in startled tones. The woman, though, glanced again at Harry, and this time didn’t look away, her eyes catching on the vivid red clothing. Hurriedly, she turned fully toward Harry, bending at the waist to get a better look at her face.

“No,” Harry managed weakly, lifting her arms, but as she tried to back away she came up short against the people behind her.

 _Do not fight_ , said the Saint, ever so calmly, as the pilgrim lifted a gloved hand and brushed Harry’s fringe from her forehead, then gasped at the sight of the mark.

“My Lady,” murmured the pilgrim in halting English, and sunk to her knees. Noticing her—then, inevitably, noticing Harry as well—her companions fell silent. Their jaws dropped and they, too, hastily knelt.

Like a tide all around her, people knelt, leaving Harry red-clothed and exposed as the doors closed with a sound like a hammer on a massive nail. In the silent room Harry heard the Saint’s murmur more clearly than ever.

 _Give yourself_.


	4. Her First Enemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! We're really sorry it's been a long time since we updated, but the good news is that this isn't even the only completed chapter we have, AND we're more excited about this project than ever and fully intend to see it through! We hope you're still reading and that you enjoy this update. Thanks as ever to trashgoblinwizardparty, our beloved beta, for all their help.

Harry stared out over the room full of kneeling people. Out of the hundreds assembled, only a few hadn’t yet fallen to their knees. They stood out, standing twice as tall as the rest, which was the only reason she found Remus in the crowd.

He looked almost as shocked as Harry felt. He was wearing his stupid, insufficient coat, and even through his beard Harry could see how the journey had taken a toll on him. She was heartsick with love for him, but when she lurched instinctively in his direction, she almost tripped over the pilgrim nearest her.

It was the tall woman with dark skin and embroidered robes. She looked up at Harry, wide-eyed but unafraid. Harry stared back down, confused by what she saw in the pilgrim’s face. It was as though she had done something to earn the trust and wonder of this stranger, when she knew she hadn’t.

She hesitated too long.

“My Lady!” cried a voice from midway across the room. “Please have mercy on my sister, I pray to you.” She lifted clasped hands above her head.

It was as though her plea broke a floodgate; suddenly the entire crowd was alive again. 

“...my Lady, why did you take my child...?”

“...we lost our food store in the flooding and now we will starve…”

“...tell us how to please you…”

“...please…”

“Please!”

It wasn’t only their voices that rose, but their bodies, too, pressing closer, shoving one another aside to get closer. _They’re going to tear me apart,_ Harry thought faintly. Her heart pounded and she looked instinctively toward Remus, but only saw his stricken expression for a moment before the crowd closed in and hid him from sight.

“My Lady,” sobbed a woman holding a bundle of soiled rags tightly to her chest. “Please, save my baby!” She pulled hard on Harry’s pristine red sleeve, and when Harry looked down at her, the woman drew back the blanket to reveal the half-decayed, grey face of a dead infant.

With a shocked cry, Harry stumbled away, only to collide with another pilgrim.

The bearded man she turned to find had tears streaming down his face. “Why did you take our harvest?” 

“AWAY!” 

Harry jerked her head around. The tall pilgrim in the elephant-embroidered tunic was reaching past Harry to shove the pilgrims away from her. Her countrymen were working with her. Brandishing long, slender staves, they quickly cleared a space around Harry, ringing her like sentries.

“Away!” the woman said again. “Show the Chosen One the respect her holy status demands!” Though heavily-accented, her words were clear, and had a somewhat chilling effect on the crowd. But the other pilgrims’ restless energy didn’t dissipate. The crowd kept up an uneasy murmur of pleas, punctuated by the occasional sharp call. Harry had the distinct sense that while a little time had been bought by the staff-wielders intervention, it wouldn’t last.

A burly man with narrowed eyes took a step forward, shouldering through the crowd..

“Who are you to stop us?” he growled, and started toward the woman with the staff. She reached out as though totally unbothered, her staff spinning like it was alive, and struck him smartly across the temple. He dropped like a stone.

With a collective gasp, the crowd reeled backward. Harry looked at the man’s motionless body, too shocked to know whether she was more relieved or horrified. He wasn’t bleeding, and his eyes were closed as though he was unconscious rather than dead. She hoped so, anyway.

The pilgrim turned to Harry and bowed her head briefly. “I am Anjali Patil, my lady,” she said in a deep voice, then quickly turned back to point her staff at the crowd. “And my brothers, Dahl and Danu,” she added. The men nodded to Harry also, their own staves at the ready. 

Harry nodded hesitantly back. Before she could think of what to say, the Bishop’s distinct voice came from the dais behind her.

“Pilgrims,” he called, “the Chosen One has revealed herself to you. Count yourselves blessed. And go in peace, that the Church may properly welcome her home.”

“The Church has kept her from us!” someone shouted.

“The rumors were true! She was Marked days ago, and yet the Church was silent!”

The Bishop was coming down from the dais, unhurried. There were men all around him, and though they wore the Church’s colors on their plain tunics and trousers, they weren’t in priests’ robes. They behaved like some sort of security. When the crowds didn’t immediately part, each of the uniformed men drew short knives in one hand and strange, tubular objects with the other. Harry wondered what the tubes were, and then a guard pressed one against a recalcitrant pilgrim. There was a short buzzing noise and the pilgrim yelped and fell back like she was injured, but the arm the guard had touched revealed no wound.

“Go in peace,” the Bishop repeated, his calm voice carrying effortlessly throughout the vast chamber. He continued to come toward Harry, shadowed by the guards in their protective formation. Her escape attempt, already going horribly, was now almost certain to fail. But knowing how close Remus was, and that the crowd around her would be so easy to influence, Harry couldn’t bring herself to just stand there and wait for the Bishop to recapture her.

“Actually,” she said, raising her voice to match the Bishop’s volume, “the Church has already made me very welcome.” She cleared her throat and added, hastily, “Thanks.” 

Around her, heads turned and the crowd hesitated. The Bishop’s eyes narrowed and he paused too.

“I, um, prefer to go home for now,” she said, trying not to wince. Her voice sounded high and uncertain. Moreover, as soon as she said the words, she realized that she couldn’t go home. The past few minutes had taught her that she couldn’t go anywhere without the risk of being recognized. And if she _was_ recognized, nowhere was safe.

“The Church is your home,” the Bishop said, echoing the words he’d told her in private the night he chased her to the staircase. Hearing them again brought on a wave of anger that burned away the worst of Harry’s unease. She looked him in the eye, unflinching.

“The Church is _not_ my home,” she said coldly.

The crowd gave what felt like a collective gasp. Harry belatedly realized how everyone would interpret what she’d just said—that she was in opposition to the Church, perhaps beyond being just a reluctant physical guest in the Cathedral. The three Patils rearranged themselves so they stood between Harry and the Bishop’s guards.

“The Tome is unequivocal,” said the Bishop, matching her tone. Their gazes locked. The Bishop continued to walk, and his guards with him. The Patils began to slowly rotate their staves.

Harry clenched her hands into fists. The energy in the room was escalating and she realized with dread that further violence was a real possibility. The guards’ hands were steady on their knives, and the Bishop had not broken stride. 

Harry wasn’t the only one to sense the rising tension between the Bishop and his guards, and Anjali and her brothers. The pilgrims who had been begging for Harry’s attention a moment before now seemed to have lost interest in her entirely, staring wide-eyed at what was unfolding in the middle of the room instead. Harry took a few slow steps in the direction of the doors, thinking she could possibly duck through the crowd…

Then she saw Remus, coming toward her, jostling through the tightly-packed people. He managed to reach her, and when he drew the closest pilgrims’ notice to Harry, she gave them what she hoped were firm but benevolent looks and they wilted back.

Remus was definitely markedly changed since she’d seen him just days before. He looked worse up close than he had from across the chamber. His eyes were wide, his face pale so the scars on his cheeks stood out like fresh wounds, and he was agonizingly thin. But his hands felt firm and warm as they pulled her into a brief embrace.

“Harry,” he breathed against her hair, then pulled back and looked worriedly over her shoulder. Harry looked, too, and saw that the Bishop’s flinty gaze was locked on Harry and Remus. The guards’ strange tubes were raised. The Patils revealed no trepidation, only leaned forward with their staves brandished.

“Let’s get out of here,” Harry murmured to Remus, still clutching his arm.

“We don’t stand a chance trying to go out the main doors,” Remus said worriedly. “The crowds are packed halfway to the city’s gates, and you—” He paused to take in her garish clothing with a meaningful look, then seemed distracted a moment by her scar. For an instant, Remus’ expression was overtaken with that same unwelcome wonder Harry kept seeing on strangers’ faces. On Remus, the sight of it was even worse. Her stomach twisted, nauseous. She squeezed his arm and to her relief he blinked and was the man she knew again in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said impulsively. “For running off.”

Remus looked startled, then his expression softened. “I appreciate that. But this isn’t the right time to worry about that.” Remus stepped back from her to turn toward the Bishop. “Things are about to get…”

Before Harry could reply, she heard the thrumming sound of something swift and aerodynamic. She had half a second to feel curious, then a searing pain lit in her left shoulder.

 _Not again,_ she thought, looking reflexively at the Saint’s statue which she had been so careful to avoid. But as she clutched her shoulder, she found that _this_ wound wasn’t supernatural. An arrow was buried in her flesh, just below her collarbone, and the room had erupted into a new kind of chaos.

“Harry, _down_!” cried Remus, vaulting into her and knocking her to the ground just as another arrow passed by her face so close she thought it might have grazed her cheek. It must not have, though, because she felt no pain, only shock as she hit the floor. Remus landed atop her, his weight surprisingly substantial given his skeletal state. Miraculously, she didn’t strike her shoulder, but still there was a copious amount of blood pouring from it. Remus rolled off of her at once and crouched beside her, smoothed her hair off her forehead and sucked in a breath as he studied the arrow.

Harry looked past Remus in dismay as a sea of legs and boots surged around her. From her strange vantage point, Harry could still see that the guards, the Patils, and at least a few dozen other pilgrims had formed a tight, protective ring around Harry. She heard the Bishop’s booming voice call out for the priests to search the vestibules. And then the Bishop, too, was bending next to her. He was at her side opposite Remus, who seemed torn between shock and anger at the proprietary way the Bishop fingered the shaft of the arrow. Remus said nothing, and held Harry’s hand tightly. For his part, the Bishop took no apparent notice of Remus.

He leaned down, his hand sliding down the shaft of the arrow. “Heal yourself,” he said, looking Harry unflinchingly in the eye as he yanked it out of her.

The arrow felt worse going out than it had going in. She was briefly blind with it.

“What the—” Remus snarled, trying to apply pressure to the wound with one hand and fumbling to tear a strip of cloth from the hem of Harry’s garment with the other. Despite his efforts, Harry could feel her blood coursing from the wound and out of her body with every beat of her pounding heart. It was a disconcerting sensation. 

The Bishop had leaned out of Remus’ way and was watching her with one brow raised expectantly.

“I don’t know how it works,” she protested through gritted teeth. The whir of another arrow split the air and someone must have been hit, as Harry heard a cry. It came from close by, but her body could hardly summon another ounce of adrenaline.

“We need to move her,” Remus said tersely. Finally, the Bishop angled his head to give Remus a brief, considering look. Then he nodded and worked his arms under Harry’s shoulders and knees. She moaned when the carry put pressure on her shoulder, but of course, the Bishop didn’t pause, even as Remus hissed inaudibly and Harry’s vision swam.

Something more pervasive than pain also swirled through her: indignation. Indignation that she was helpless when Remus was in danger. That someone she loathed—a _captor_ —was “rescuing” her when she should be helping herself. It felt absolutely _wrong. Unbearable_. She should be able to help not only herself, but others too. Otherwise what was the purpose of the fate that had been foisted on her? She bit the inside of her cheek, squeezed her eyes closed, and imagined the hot pain in her shoulder cooling; the broken flesh knitting.

Nothing happened, though, except that as she lost more blood, her head spun more slowly and the whole world felt thick and hazy as though veiled in a white fog.

_She could almost see the path, with the darkness all around, and very close by a vivid bubble filled with Remus’ stricken face. She couldn’t quite hear him whisper, “Please let her live,” but his lips formed the words, unmistakably._

And with the words came a strange, controllable power, passed to Harry in an instant, hers to wield. She unleashed it and where her own efforts had failed, Remus’ wish was an unstoppable force.

Harry’s head settled, the nauseating pain gone in an instant. The Bishop had already managed to carry her into an antechamber, a stream of pilgrims and guards coming in behind. And, Harry saw with relief, Remus was still with them.

She elbowed the Bishop as hard as she could in the stomach, but earned no greater reaction than she would have if she drove the pointy part of her arm into a stone wall. He did, however, set her down. Somehow he’d wound up holding the arrow, blood-streaked but intact. He was looking down at it with a self-satisfied expression. Harry wished she’d elbowed him harder.

“Very good,” he said, only loud enough for Harry to hear despite the growing crowd in the room. She glared at him, indignant on principle, but for some reason the way he said the words also made her feel that strange tension he had a knack for bringing out. A feeling she didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure she wanted to.

“Secure the room,” the Bishop ordered, and the guards rushed to do as they were bid. The Patils and a handful of other pilgrims stayed where they were, looking guardedly from the Bishop to Harry and back again.

“What happened out there?” Remus asked, breaking the short silence. “Who would want to hurt her?” “The enemies of the Church,” the Bishop said flatly, as though the answer was obvious. “We had good reason for keeping her within the Cathedral and away from the public eye.” He looked testily at Harry, his good humor from moments before vanished. He still held the arrow, and didn’t seem to mind that now his hand was covered in Harry’s blood, too. She noted it on his robes as well, from how he’d carried her. She looked down at herself and saw that most of her left sleeve was saturated, yet she didn’t feel any lingering effects of blood loss.

“You could have mentioned that ‘good reason,’” Harry snapped, “and then maybe I would have felt more cooperative.”

The Bishop narrowed his eyes. “I’m going to find out who did this,” he said, snapping the arrow and tossing it aside. “I hope you’re feeling cooperative now, when I tell you to _stay here_.”

Harry raised her chin and opened her mouth to argue, then felt Remus’ gentle hand on her arm, and held herself back.

The Bishop gave her an infuriating little nod and left, flanked by guards. With any luck, Harry thought, that mysterious archer would make _him_ their target.

She flinched at her own morbid wish; she wasn’t usually spiteful. But when she saw the Bishop, a myriad of dark and strange thoughts overtook her.

“Harry,” Remus said softly, “we need to talk.”

She turned to him, looking into his familiar, steady eyes, and found a grimmer look on his face than she’d ever seen before. “Okay,” she murmured. “I can’t really explain any of this, if that’s what you were hoping for.” She managed a half-smile.

Remus shook his head. “I know.” He was looking at her shoulder, fingering the rent fabric as though he had to feel for himself that the skin beneath was really whole. “It must have been a shock.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, left a little speechless by the understatement.

Remus caught her wry tone and huffed out his own incredulous laugh. “When I heard...I couldn’t believe it.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Then I remembered where you said you were going, and the coincidence— it made me wonder, if _you_ could be…” He shook his head again. “I’d stopped believing in the Tome at all, but as soon as I put the two thoughts together, somehow I half believed it. That you were her. And then I heard you speak to me at the Weasleys’, exactly the way I once expected to hear a Saint. A clear voice in my mind and, for half a moment, the sight of your face...”

Harry stared back at him. “You heard me? You _saw_ me?” She remembered her dream in a confusing flash of images and sounds. “You went there to leave Teddy,” she said slowly.

Remus nodded. “He ran off to play in the garden like he wouldn’t even miss me. Kind of hurt my feelings.” He smiled to show he wasn’t serious.

Harry felt deeply confused, but then, if she could see across space and, perhaps to an extent, time as well, then it probably wasn’t the strangest realization she’d had about herself in the past couple of days, she supposed with a dismal sigh.

“Molly and Arthur send their love, of course, and Ron has been a bit better.”

Hearing his name reminded Harry why she had been so desperate to leave the Cathedral. “I need to get to him. So I can help him.”

Remus grimaced. “I know you want that, Harry, but there’s no way. You’ve seen what it was like when people recognized you. We barely got you out alive.”

Harry considered reminding him that she had healed the wound herself, but in truth she wasn’t sure she could do it again. And it was Remus, as much as Harry, who had empowered her... _that_ was something she needed to think about, but right now it just made her head hurt.

“And really,” Remus was going on, looking thoughtful, “he is in much better shape now than when you left him. Not _well_ , mind you. But it’s not so dire. If your abilities are like the Saints’, you don’t have to _get to him_ to help him? You should be able to find him, just as you found me, from wherever you are. You’re the Chosen One.”

Harry was unconvinced, but she could tell arguing wasn’t going to get her anywhere. And Remus wasn’t wrong about the logistics of getting to Ron. She didn’t know how she could manage it, with the streets teeming with people desperate for her to help them, and unrealizing she was completely ill-equipped to do so.

“The Chosen One,” she muttered, feeling helpless and hating it. “ _Me_? You know me! I’m not”—she searched for the word—“ _holy_ ,” she managed at last, her voice breaking a bit on the vowel.

He looked at her forehead with a wry twist to his mouth. “But apparently you are.”

“Remus,” Harry said, groping for his hand and squeezing it hard when she found it. “Please. Get me out of here. There’s been some—mistake.” Was that the word for an error made by Saints? “This isn’t _me._ ”

There was barely-audible shouting past the door and they both turned to look, then Remus seemed to shake himself. “We don’t have enough time. Quickly, what do you know about the Tome?”

Harry frowned, surprised by the question. “Not much,” she admitted. “Just what little I remember from living with the Dursleys. It’s not like you read aloud from it by the fire every night.”

Remus still didn’t smile. “No,” he said slowly, “I didn’t. But I wasn’t always so dismissive.” He looked at her forehead for a long moment, then met her eye. “I guess I was wrong to stray from the Church.” “I don’t think I’m following.”

Remus wrinkled his nose. “Of course you’re not. Look, Harry, I don’t know how much time we have, so I can’t explain everything. I will, one day, I promise, but for now—soon, if you haven’t yet, you’re going to read everything the Tome has to say about the Chosen One. In fact, you’re smart, so I bet you’ll read it twice.”

Harry, realizing that this would have been a logical first step after she’d woken up and healed, flushed. “I’ve been thinking about how to get away,” she said, half-defensive, half-apologetic.

“Of course you have,” Remus said fondly. He touched the top of her head with one warm palm, then let it fall back to her shoulder and continued looking at her intently. “But this is where you should be, for now. It _is_ safer. That doesn’t mean…” he looked askance and lowered his voice further “...that you should trust anyone here. Not even the Bishop.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Harry said. “I don’t.”

Remus’ mouth quirked briefly. “Atta girl. And don’t trust the Tome either.”

Harry blinked. “I thought you just said you shouldn’t have strayed from the Church…?” “Just because they were right about there being a Chosen One doesn’t mean they were right about everything,” Remus murmured, giving her a little shake for emphasis. “Do you understand?” Harry nodded. “You’re really going to leave me here with them?”

Regret flashed in Remus’ eyes. “Yes. You know I can’t stay.”

The disease. The edict. _The impure blood shall not taint the congregation_. He would be in danger if he was discovered, and Harry couldn’t be sure she could protect him against a particularly impassioned devotee. 

“And while I hate to leave you here, I _do_ think it’s best.”

Harry hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Even if we could get away, you can’t go home. But Harry,” he squeezed her arm tightly, “if half of what the Tome says is true, and I think it must be, then you don’t need anyone’s protection. You have power beyond that of anyone, human or Saint. Learn how to wield it, and the world will be at your feet.”

There was a commotion around the door, but Harry didn’t look away from Remus, and he didn’t look away from her.

“I don’t want the world at my feet,” she protested.

Now he did smile, slow and warm, like he’d just put a puzzle together. The lines of tension in his face faded away just for a moment. “I know. That’s why if anyone should be the Chosen One, it’s you.”

He pulled her to him and she flung her arms around him in return, aware of the door opening, the sound of footsteps as several people came in, and then it closed again.

“The Cathedral is secure,” the Bishop announced. “You may all go, safely. Thank you for your assistance. The Church is grateful.”

When Harry and Remus broke apart, she found the Patils facing down the Bishop once again.

“We are not yours to dismiss, priest,” Anjali said coolly, and looked deliberately away from the Bishop to look expectantly at Harry.

Harry felt dismayed at the implications of that statement, and also impressed by how _unimpressed_ Anjali was by the Bishop.

“You don’t have to stay,” Harry said, exchanging a quick look with Remus, who nodded. “I’m fine. But _thank you_ ,” she added, fervently. “Really. You saved my life.”

Anjali inclined her head, but she was looking curiously at Harry’s shoulder. “It was never in real danger, my Lady,” she said calmly, picking up her staff. “If you are in need, my people are at your disposal. We’ve anticipated your new order.”

The Bishop happened to be standing directly in Harry’s line of sight, which was the only reason she caught sight of his eyes narrowing the slightest bit at those parting words. He quickly masked his reaction, though, and watched impassively as the Patils filed out, followed by the other pilgrims. That left only Harry, Remus, the Bishop, and the remaining guards.

Remus cleared his throat awkwardly. Harry felt the bizarre urge to introduce them, but she didn’t even know the Bishop’s name.

“Tom Riddle,” said Remus. Harry stared at him for a full second before she realized that he hadn’t actually read her mind. “I remember you.”

The Bishop gazed back at Remus thoughtfully. “I remember you as well,” he said after a moment. “You were promising, before you came down with the disease.”

To her frustration, Harry had no idea what they were talking about. Remus, realizing that, glanced at her apologetically.

“I never told you this, but a long time ago I started out a Church’s page. Riddle and I both trained at the Godspeaker’s Cathedral.”

Harry struggled to keep her jaw from dropping. “ _You_?” she managed at last, more sharply than she’d intended. 

Remus winced. “Yes,” he sighed. “But of course, my condition made me ineligible, and I was dismissed.”

Harry hadn’t needed another reason to hate the Church, yet here it was. She thought wistfully how different her situation would be right now if it was Remus, and not this— _Tom Riddle_ —to whom she was vulnerable. 

But then again, the thought of Remus as even a page, let alone a Bishop, was impossible and ridiculous. She’d have to digest this revelation later.

“I should be going, then,” Remus said, putting his head down, “now that I see you’re safe.”

He’d already told Harry he wasn’t staying, but the idea of him leaving in the next few moments made Harry’s heart pound. “Will you—” she began, not sure what she intended to say, then settled for “—write?”

“Maybe I’ll call,” Remus said thoughtfully, looking at the Bishop. _Tom Riddle_ , Harry remembered, and decided she’d think of him by his name. Though he was still mostly inhuman to her—too composed, too distant, too fucking _pretty_ —she liked the feeling of having stripped him of his title, even just in her head.

“Perhaps,” said Riddle coolly. “But would you even be able to find access?” He looked Remus up and down dismissively. “I didn’t realize you were so well-connected.” The sarcasm in his voice was faint but had a sharp edge.

“It never ceases to surprise me, either,” Remus replied with perfect composure. The two men continued to stare at each other for a long moment until Harry interrupted them.

“Er, what does it mean to _call_?”

Riddle turned to her with narrowed eyes. “Are you being serious?” “She was raised in a village,” Remus said defensively. “What kind of exposure do you think ordinary people have to that kind of technology?”

 _Ah, technology_ , Harry thought. Like the electric torch she’d seen the Bishop— _Riddle_ —use.

“It’s no matter, Harry,” Remus said with a final warm smile in her direction. “I’ll simply remember you in my prayers.”

He hugged her once more, and Harry wasn’t sure she’d be able to let him go. She took fistfuls of his tattered, too-light coat and clung to him for a long moment, then forced herself to step back, blinking hastily to keep from embarrassing herself in front of the Bishop. Riddle. Not that she cared what he thought, but she hated crying. It made her feel like a child.

“Give Teddy my love.”

“Of course.” 

“And Ron...will you…” She didn’t even know what she was trying to say. Remus squeezed her arm and gave her a last long, meaningful smile like he understood her head and heart better than she did. Then he went out, followed by a couple silent guards.

When he was gone, Harry was surprised to find Riddle studying her with a puzzled frown. “ _Harry_?” he asked. The way he said her name was different than any way she’d ever heard it, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. All she knew was that it made her arms prickle with goose flesh. Riddle, oblivious to her unease, continued incredulously. “Is that really your name?”


	5. Through the Rift Comes the Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS as always to mith, trashgoblinwizardparty, for all their beta help. ❤️❤️❤️

“ _Harry_? Is that really your name?”

Harry didn’t have the energy for this all-too-familiar conversation. “Yep,” she said, “I’ve told you before.” 

He looked completely disbelieving. Harry was incredulous, but didn’t have time to be outraged. She nodded toward the door. “So, are we going, or what?”

Riddle didn’t press the point. He gestured for her to precede him toward the door. Harry led the way, trying not to show how uneasy it made her to walk past the armed guards waiting there. For a moment, she expected to see the same chaos she’d escaped from on the other side of the door. But when it swung open, there was only the vast hall, strangely empty.

Empty save the statue of the Saint of Mercy, smiling her faint and benevolent smile, carved eyes downcast. Harry gripped the doorframe and stared hard at the Saint’s face.

Now _you have nothing to say, huh?_ she thought sourly. But instead of leaving it at that like she should have, she focused harder on the smooth marble planes of the statue until something sparked inside her head. _I have questions for you. Where are you?_

Life stirred in the blank stone face, and even as Harry felt fear, and a too-vivid memory of the way lightning had come down from the ceiling and lit her on fire—saddling her with a destiny she didn’t want, couldn’t fulfill—there was an irrepressible part of her that couldn’t back down. _That’s right. Talk to me!_

The Saint’s eyes seized upon Harry’s, and just like that, Harry wasn’t standing in the Cathedral looking at a statue.

She was standing in a meadow, looking at a real woman. Or, someone real, but not very much like a woman, the closer she looked. The outline was there, but the impression of marble clung to the too-firm, unblemished skin and the riverstone eyes. 

“We cannot speak together for long,” said the Saint in a booming, musical voice that made the grass sway around Harry’s feet. “This place is not true.”

“What does that—” Harry began, then stopped and shook her head. “Never mind. I want you to help Ron.”

The Saint looked at her as though she didn’t know what or whom Harry was talking about, but that could have been because her face had no range of expression. She was fixed instead into that eerie, sad and sweet hint of a smile. 

“Help?” The lilting word stung Harry’s ears.

The Saint, seeing Harry flinch, said, “This place is not true.”

“I want you to make him well,” Harry said. “Like Teddy! The night I saw you in the window.”

The Saint’s face froze over like the glaze on a window, and a cold wind swept through the meadow, full of stinging ice. 

“The power is the gift,” said the Saint. “We must ask for what we require.”

“I’m asking!” Harry shouted around her chattering teeth. 

“And I ask,” said the Saint, voice sharp as sleet, bruising as hail. “Find your tether.”

Harry clenched her hands into fists, so cold she thought she might not be able to find breath to speak. It was as though there was nothing but snow in her lungs. “I don’t understand,” she managed. She could barely hear herself in her own ears over the swirling, biting wind.

Then the wind and the cold were gone, and Harry was back in the Cathedral, except that she was lying on the cold floor and looking at the Bishop. Riddle. It reminded her unnervingly of the moments when she thought she was bleeding to death, just before he’d pulled the arrow from her shoulder.

“She spoke to you,” Riddle said at once.

Harry grimaced, pushing him away so she could sit up. The feeling of the silky black fur on his sleeve made her palm tingle. She rubbed her hand against her thigh. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Riddle frowned, rising slowly. He didn’t extend a hand to her like Remus would have, but Harry found that she was glad. It was odd and jarring, his lack of any natural inclination to help her, but it was what she hated least about him. 

Harry got to her feet on her own, feeling tired and deeply cold. She rubbed her arms. “I just want to be alone,” she muttered to the Bishop.

“Very well.” 

He silently led the way to the room she’d fled. The Cathedral seemed different, less threatening, now that she was here more or less willingly. At least, she thought dully, Remus had said that the situation with Ron was less “dire,” whatever that meant.

And she’d really talked to Remus in her dreams. _That_ realization was still too far-reaching in its implications for her to tackle. Though it might mean that when she’d seen Ron and Hermione, hovering in the globe over the path, that had been real, too. Maybe she could find Ron there again, just to reassure herself that he was fighting the illness on his own. For now.

The room felt different too. Instead of a cell with four walls, a guarded door and nothing else, she saw the details in the carved stone above the windows — lilies with curling petals. She could appreciate the fine, heavy silk of the drapes, embroidered in a pattern too small and complex to make out from her old vantage point on the bed. The floor had a muted gleam in the late morning sun, its surface swirled with the rich grain of fine polished stone in sunlit-gold. 

She realized she’d been absently fingering the place in her scarlet blouse where the arrow had torn through.  The edges of the tear were clean, proof the arrow had been razor-sharp. Harry knew a few men and women in the village who were bowhunters, carving a living from gathering small game from the sparse forest. The arrows they pried loose from their takings were hand-carved from flint, the shafts flexible strands from saplings’ trunks. 

Clearly the person trying to kill Harry was a more refined hunter. She wished she could remember it better, but the shock and pain had distracted her. What had the arrow looked like? What could it tell her about whomever had shot her?

 _The enemies of the church_ , the Bishop had said. What did that mean? Harry knew, of course, that there was dissension in the populace, but she hadn’t thought of it in terms of organized, efficient violence. When violence broke out in Harry’s village, it seemed spontaneous, chaotic. If there was something more unified brewing…

The thought made her shudder. Once, she might have been lured by the idea of taking part in a resistance—just a few days ago, had she known it existed. But even before her strange inheritance, Harry had never understood violence, no matter the stakes.

Her fingers drifted, pressing through the hole in the fabric where, beneath, her skin was smooth. She peered down at herself to confirm: the wound had healed without a mark. 

She reached behind herself and touched her shoulder blades. There, she did feel some sort of pattern on her skin. And the mark on her forehead had faded to a clean red seam, but showed no signs of disappearing entirely. What made the difference? Why did one tear scar, and another heal perfectly?

She was still frowning, tracing what she could reach of the trailing end of one of the slight raised marks, when Evan came in with a tray. It was, apparently, a large, late breakfast. The sight of his guarded expression made Harry feel briefly guilty, but she wasn’t sure how much energy she could spare for making him feel better. Luckily, after he set the tray down within her reach at the foot of the bed, his expression brightened a bit on its own.

“Now that you’re better, the cook said you can have sugar!” He rummaged in his pocket and produced a small bottle of something medium-brown in color and handed it to her. Harry was interested, and reached out automatically, then grimaced when she found the outside slightly sticky, with gobs of lint stuck to it from Evan’s pocket.

He didn’t notice that she hadn’t reacted with a mirror image of his own undiluted glee. “You can have as much as you want, she said!” He looked expectant.

Harry knew what sugar was, but she’d never seen it in this precise...state. She looked at the bottle, masking  her distaste for the way it was stuck to her hand. Then she looked with longing at the tray, which included a few flat cakes and a rasher of bacon as well as a bowl of porridge. Her mouth watered, and she wanted nothing more than to toss the icky bottle back at Evan and dig in, but the thought of erasing the excited expression from his face stopped her.

“How do I…?”  
  
Evan looked briefly confused, then his lips parted in surprise. “You mean you’ve never had _syrup_?” he exclaimed, suddenly hopping onto the bed and almost upsetting the things on the tray. He took the bottle from Harry while she watched, bemused. He unscrewed its little cap, then proceeded, before she could stop him, to douse most of her breakfast in the “syrup.” It was a little more golden and glossy-looking outside of the bottle, but still not particularly appetizing.

“There you go!” he said, putting the cap back on. “Try it!”

Beneath Evan’s watchful gaze, Harry obediently lifted a spoonful of porridge with a few droplets of syrup on it to her mouth, braced for some sort of horrible taste. 

Instead, the sugar hit her tongue like a balm, much nicer than the granulated stuff that the Weasleys rationed over certain dishes at holidays. This was smoother, purer, and blended with the whole mouthful,  brightening the entire bite. Harry slowly chewed, savoring it.

“Oh, my Gods,” she said. Harry rarely swore, and the irony of what had tumbled out of her mouth had her and Evan locking eyes in a wide-eyed stare for a moment. Then Evan dissolved into giggles and Harry smiled around her mouthful of porridge.

“Good, isn’t it?” Evan asked when he’d sobered. Harry tugged the tray closer to her shins and dug out another spoonful, seeking instead of avoiding the syrup now.

“Amazing,” she agreed emphatically. 

“You should see what it’s like on the biscuit,” Evan encouraged, scooting back to give her space. He watched her react to the biscuit—perfectly flaky and then, the burst of salt beneath the sweetness, _incredible_ —and then, giggling again, got off the bed and drifted toward the door with a little parting wave.

Harry, recalling herself, swallowed abruptly. “Hey, wait.”

Evan paused, brows up.

“Can you bring me a Tome, please?”

Evan relaxed. “Oh, of course! Actually…” He looked around and then his gaze alighted on the nightstand beside the bed. He went there, pulled out the little drawer, and held up a glossy-covered book before setting it on the tabletop. “There’s one in almost every draw around here,” he explained.

“Good to know,” Harry said, looking at the book with trepidation. _I know you’re smart and you’ll read it twice_ , Remus’ voice echoed in her ears. She sighed, resolving to get started...but not until after breakfast.

Breakfast took some time. Harry’s pace slowed to a measured crawl; she wasn’t willing to stop until she’d experienced syrup’s effect on all the items on her tray. And since she was fed in feast portions in this place, that meant that it was about an hour before she finally became so uncomfortably full, she gave up.

She set the tray on the table by the window, then turned and studied the Tome. She had the absurd feeling that it was volatile, like a wild animal, and she made her initial assessment from a safe distance.

But, of course, it was just a book.

(A book that had repulsed her, for some reason, since the first time it was read aloud to her.)

Harry found the idea of picking it up unsavory. Like she’d betray the younger version of herself who had vowed never to open a Tome again the day Remus had taken her from the Dursleys’, where its presence felt constant.

Only Remus’ very sensible instructions made her walk slowly to the bedside, sit down, and reach for it.

There was a silk bookmark built into the spine. It marked a page which she automatically opened to—the first page of the Second Volume, which she knew to be the one that discussed the Chosen One. She snorted at the coincidence.

The entire book was slimmer and lighter than Harry recalled. But then, she had been younger and smaller the last time she’d held it.

With a sigh, she skimmed the first page.

_And then the Chosen One shall walk among them. She shall be born from the Sufferer in the Likeness of the Saints, and she shall be known by her Marking and her red garments. Through her there shall be a bridge between the human realm and the realm of Gods._

Remus might have overestimated her retention of the Tome in general. She wasn’t sure what was meant by “Saint” versus “God,” nor anything about their various realms. Except that, in a common-sense way, she understood that the Saints had come from somewhere, and presumably returned there for good.

There would be no shortcuts. It wasn’t mention of the Chosen One she needed to study, but the entire Tome.

She thumbed back to the beginning of the book, drew up her knees, and settled in.

Reading a book that you were skeptical of, and associated with the relatives who loathed you, was one experience. It was quite another experience to read a book you were fairly confident was perfectly true, and which apparently related directly to your destiny.

Harry had never been a voluntary reader. (When Hermione read for pleasure, Harry and Ron shared haunted looks of dismay then went off to kick or throw a ball.) Nor had Harry ever prided herself on her reading comprehension. Nonetheless, she devoured the Tome from one cover to the other before evening. 

In fact, it was the fading light from the window that at last made her set the book, almost complete, in her lap. She looked up, blinking with strained eyes, surprised to find the room in shadow.

Harry lay on her side to finish the last few pages, angling herself so the last slanting rays feebly illuminated the book enough for her to make out the words. It never occurred to her to simply switch on the lamp by the bed; the luxury of instant light was still easy to forget.

Somewhere in the last few sentences, she dozed off.

Harry didn’t go directly to the path that she’d visited each night since the Marking. Instead she was in a drifting, ordinary sort of dream place, where her mind spun back some of the most resounding lines from the Tome.

 _In the origin, the human world was its own. But it brought on itself a great peril_.

Harry was floating on her back in a wide quiet sea, but she felt the waves building and cresting beneath her and saw in the blank sky above a sudden, jagged web of lightning.

_But then in its hour of peril, the barriers were brought down and the Saints came to the human world, rescuers and repairers, until such time as the realm could be returned to the humans._

The sea calmed. A ship appeared on the horizon as the clouds broke apart. Its sails were billowing and blood-red. Land had formed on the opposite horizon, with Harry between the two. It rose up from the water like a leaping whale, shedding stones down a steep rocky cliff.

_The beings of one world cannot pass to the worlds of another without leaving a rift._

From the cliff, a volley of arrows arched over Harry and fell on the approaching ship, piercing the sails in a thousand places and leaving them tattered, the ship rudderless and twisting in the tide.

Harry closed her eyes, content to float. Even as the waves turned violent, pitching her to and fro, she found she enjoyed the tossing and turning.

But eventually the sea became so hot and inhospitable, Harry sat up. The waves were high, she’d lost her buoyancy and started to sink, and she’d forgotten how to swim. She didn’t panic, though; she had wings.

But her wings were water-logged. She struggled to rise from the water, feeling like every wingbeat was an impossible struggle. But eventually she was only ankle-deep in the water and then, she was above sea level and rising inch by painful inch.

Finally, Harry flew in earnest above the stormy water, her wings shedding moisture with each beat, a shower of diamonds. She ascended with ever-decreasing strain toward the moon, bright behind its gauzy, silver veil of clouds.

In the moon was a familiar face: Remus’.

Actually, it wasn’t a moon at all, but one of the globes along the now-familiar path. Harry got near enough she could hear his voice, and arranged herself so she had the illusion of meeting his eyes. Like before, when she’d collapsed in the Cathedral hall, his face was enlarged, all the lines and age and pain there painfully stark. But so was the marbled brown of his irises and the warmth in his eyes. The sight filled her with longing, igniting a painful crush of conflicting emotions: foremost worry, homesickness, and love.

“Are you there, Harry?”

“Yes, I’m here,” Harry murmured, remembering that Remus said he could hear her voice when she’d seen him here before. 

It happened again: Remus’ eyes widened, as though he _could_ hear her, and her heart quickened. “Harry?”

“Remus, can you hear me?” He looked from side to side, like he was hearing something faint but which he couldn’t quite make out. “Remus!” she shouted as loudly as she could, and his head jerked in her direction. Remus’ eyes crinkled with his smile.

“Harry,” he said warmly, and Harry grinned in delight. But the moment was short-lived.

There was a sudden, twisting wind that growled and tugged at Harry’s wings. She looked up and saw the empty darkness overhead seem to part—like the densest shadow, black-on-black—or maybe it was that she was seeing into a place where there was no light, and therefore, no color at all. Only varying degrees of space and pressure, like a cavern at the bottom of the ocean.

Emerging from the emptiness came the rhythm of beating wings that Harry remembered well. The same instinctive fear that had gripped her before returned. Except this time it wasn’t just the swirling wind and the eerie sound of rushing air suggesting something threatening might be near. Another noise parted the low howl of the wind: a throaty hiss that built into a full, bellowing roar. 

The globe, with its vision of Remus and its internal light, trembled and disappeared like a bursting soap bubble. Without it, Harry felt both unsheltered and swallowed by the darkness. And without a single visual reference point she was disoriented in an instant. Instead of flying toward the path, she rose into the chaotic storm beyond it instead.

She realized her mistake too late; two clumsy beats of her wings closer to the source of the current and she couldn’t escape its forces. Her wings wrenched painfully and she saw a cascade of her own feathers tear past her face. They were just before her eyes or she couldn’t have made them out; anything further away was effectively invisible in the total dark. She didn’t know down from up. Her flipping stomach was the only thing that signaled to her she was somersaulting in the ricochet.

And then another assault on her already battered senses: a smell like small, rotting animals, layered under the wet odor of the green scum that crusted the shores of stagnant pounds. With the smell came a wave of intense heat that felt like a physical flame on her skin. 

What she’d believed to be a dream seemed suddenly more real and vivid than anything she’d ever known. Particularly as it dawned on her with abrupt certainty that she was a handspan from death, courtesy of whatever terrible, invisible beast had descended upon her.

The smell, the heat, the churning wind, and the sure knowledge she was falling helplessly to her death. It was gutting.

But then, at the peak of her helpless terror, a burst of light shredded the darkness and it carried the clear sound of a single, sustained note. Though soft, that otherworldly hum layered over the violent wind, unobscured.

The mask of darkness lifted from Harry’s face. It would have been a relief except that what she saw was so terrible, she wished immediately for the blinding dark. 

Just feet away in the tangle of air was the long, sinuous and scaled body of a creature so vast that a single ridge on its spined tail would have outweighed her. It had a clawed club of spikes on the tip of its tail and, further along its confusingly lengthy body, massive parted jaws filled with rows of gleaming teeth. In its throat burned a hellscape of licking flames and embers.

Harry’s entire body went slack, and though she’d felt out of control before, she hadn’t realized how much subconscious effort was needed to balance and stabilize her wings, keeping her afloat. Now she was helpless and falling, battered by the violent current as she fell like a wind-tossed stone.

Then the light and sound caught her. That was the only way to explain it. She hit a soft, full note and coasted along it until she struck a pillow of warm light, and in the light was the face of the Saint of Mercy.

 _Harry, it is not safe here. You require your tether_ , said the Saint in that unforgettable voice, but she sounded much clearer than she had in the strange meadow where Harry had encountered her earlier in the day. 

 _When you return to the prayer realm,_ the Saint said, _remember: silence is your shield_.

With those cryptic parting words, she pressed Harry back along the note toward the waking world.

<hr>

Harry awoke in a panic. She shot upright, blinking in disoriented confusion. She’d expected the blank darkness of late night—like what the monster had emerged from. She only saw it in the square windows. The rest of the room was lit by a soft glow, like a variant of that musical warmth that the Saint had embodied. 

She was in her room. She was awake. The monster had been part of a nightmare—not a nightmare, _real_ , a little voice insisted—but regardless, she was out of it now.

She breathed out, realizing as she calmed that there shouldn’t be any light in the room; she hadn’t turned on the lights before dozing off. Which meant…

In the circle of lamplight across the room sat the Bishop, a book in his hand, his legs crossed, his wrist balanced against his knee. He wasn’t wearing his robes. He had only simple trousers and a tunic. There was a vent in the wall behind him that channeled warm air into the room. He’d clearly seated himself to take full advantage of it.

Seeing her wake, he set his book aside and stood slowly with a concerned expression.

“Are you well?” he murmured. He spoke in that familiar, velvety tone, but there was something strange about his entire affect. Harry, though, was still too distracted by what she’d just seen—felt, _smelled_ —to puzzle through his odd demeanor.

“I saw…” she began, trailing off in surprise as he sat one hip on the edge of the bed and leaned into her space so he could study her face. She couldn’t find her voice when he brushed her forehead with the back of his hand, like he was taking her temperature, then trailed his fore and middle finger down her temple and pressed them into the leaping pulse point in her neck. He did it all with that little concerned frown, like he was trying to gauge her health.

“I saw a monster,” she forced out, her voice a rasp. Up close, his pearly-smooth skin was roughened over his cheeks by the evidence of a dark beard, though his shave was close. Would it feel firm, Harry wondered, if she touched it? 

Baffled by the thought, she blinked a few times, trying to remember the dream—if it _was_ a dream. The Saint’s words were echoing in her mind, too. _Find your tether. Return to the prayer realm._

Realm. That was a word from the Tome. Harry looked over at the nightstand, as much for a reason to look away from the Bishop as anything else, and was surprised to find it empty. Then she remembered that the Bishop had been reading from a book when she woke up. Apparently it was _her_ book, and not one he’d brought with him with plans to read at her bedside. What had made him come into her room?

She looked at his face, startled to find his eyes on hers, calm and watchful. Sympathetic.

“I can only imagine what it’s like to have all of this thrust upon you so suddenly,” he said with this new, soft look in his eyes that Harry didn’t know how to reconcile with any of their past experience, including earlier that day when he’d taken apparent delight in forcing an arrow out of her shoulder.

“I’m not just having a...a _breakdown_ ,” Harry insisted testily, pushing herself back against the headboard so she could have a little distance from him. He took up a lot of space, and there was a strange energy that seemed to radiate from him and prickle her skin when he was this close. Also, the place he’d touched her forehead and neck were hot and electrified. She wanted to rub the skin there, but was worried he’d get the wrong idea. She hadn’t _liked_ it. “ _I saw a monster_ ,” she repeated with emphasis. “It was…” she frowned. “It was in the prayer realm,” she said firmly. Though she didn’t know what that meant, she trusted the Saint to at least speak the truth to her.

Finally, the Bishop reacted to what Harry was saying. His lips pursed and a tiny furrow appeared between his sculpted eyebrows. She thought if she saw his face in a globe the way she’d seen Remus’, as though beneath a microscope, she still wouldn’t find a single blemish.

“The prayer realm, you say?” The way he said it, Harry knew at once that he’d never heard of such a thing, either. But he didn’t sound skeptical, only curious. He believed her. For some reason, that made a little of the tension drain out of her body, and she slumped back against the pillows.

“Yes. I go there. When I’m asleep.”

The sharp look he fixed her with was much more in-character. “Oh?” 

“Yes,” Harry said, relieved to be talking about it. “There’s a path, and along the path, there are places...I think of them as globes, but they’re big, floating spheres...and in them I can see people. People who are thinking of me,” she said, realizing it only a moment before she said it. That was what the scenes had in common: the people in them were thinking of Harry. They faded when the subjects’ thoughts moved on. “I thought it was just an ordinary dream, but I saw Remus there. Really saw him, a few days ago. I was here, dreaming of him in the village. When I spoke to him today, he said he heard my voice that day too.”

She had a moment’s pause. Why was she entrusting the Bishop with this? Granted, she wasn’t sure anything she’d said should be kept secret, but until she knew for sure it made her feel suddenly, stupidly vulnerable to have spoken of it to _him_.

She blamed the near-death experience for rattling her, and also the Bishop himself, for looming over her like this, and blinking at her with those long, black eyelashes, with a single soft curl preventing the plane of his brow from looking too severe. _Riddle, not “the Bishop_ ,” she reminded herself. But she wasn’t sure what she called him made a difference. He had a strange effect on her regardless; an effect that she couldn’t armor herself against so easily.

He seemed to realize she’d shared more than she meant to, and his look turned back to that expression of such perfect understanding, it had to be manufactured.

Something clicked in Harry’s head and with a flash of irritation, she realized it _was_ manufactured. He was trying to ingratiate himself. He was a little more talented at deceit even than Aunt Petunia, but Harry had learned from watching her aunt expertly switch gears throughout Harry’s formative years. Harry knew falseness when she saw it.

She went from irritated to curious in a rush, though. She knew _what_ he was doing, but couldn’t fathom _why_. It wasn’t just that she was the Chosen One and he wanted her favor. He’d known that the day before, and the day before that, and it hadn’t stopped any of his careless cruelty.

Unaware he’d been found out, Riddle stroked her arm comfortingly. It had the opposite of a calming  effect, instead spreading that electric tingling that made it so hard to think straight. Harry bit the inside of her cheek, her toes curled, and…

 _Oh_.

That heat and tingling sensation had indeed spread. Everywhere. And it seemed to be concentrating between her legs.

 _Fuck_.

Harry jerked her arm away, but it was too late. She put one hand over her mouth and shoved Riddle bodily away with the other. Though he was much larger, and Harry wasn’t particularly strong, she caught him by surprise and he was thrown off-balance, catching himself with one hand on the mattress.  

“Er,” she said, looking into his baffled face, her voice muffled by her hand. “I should probably get some sleep,” she managed lamely. She dropped her hand and clenched it into a fist over her knee. “So, good night, then.”

Riddle stared at her. She thought with horror that his confused reaction to being pushed away was resolving into a sort of thoughtful clarity. She clenched her thighs together and gritted her teeth, letting out her breath in a relieved hiss when he eased off the bed.

Riddle didn’t leave immediately. He walked unhurriedly toward the table where he’d left his book. Harry thought, somewhat hysterically, he might just go back to his chair. But instead he reached out for the switch on the lamp. Before he turned it, though, he looked back at Harry. The way his shoulders flexed under his shirt sent another spark of unwelcome heat through Harry’s chest.

“Good night, then. Harry.”

He turned off the light.

Harry listened to the door open and close, then rolled over onto her stomach with a miserable groan.


End file.
